Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I find it impacts 22% of traffic actually.

Keep it easy man.  If it is a one position drop, monitor your CTR and whether there are new competitors in your SERPs that have maybe just pushed you down.

David is spot on aobut the titles and urls.  Large DB driven sites tend to cause big issues off of simple mistakes in coding or content entry.

I have to say "Crawl it" again.

I would crawl the site and look for and spider traps or potential duplicate content.   I make it a point to do so every time I see one of these notices and I have found things after these notices that could potentially  or havecontributed to a Panda filter.

Although I do recommend at least weekly crawls on larger sites, these notices area  good prompt to do it if you have been lax on your audits.

Think of the Yahoo Directory.   It has cost associated with it and a listing there indicates a real website rather than spam.  Whether no-follow or not, if a directory carries trust and authority it is beneficial.

Regardless of what is said, these listings do add to your metric profile and do contribute to ranking.  Just like all the other "non-working" link types (read Press Release etc).

Don't believe me?  Go disavow or remove all your no follows.

There is amazing trust flow with press distribution and it is VERY possible to rank certain queries with Press alone (read low comp local), however, ignoring the branding and view/traffic potential is a mistake.

Do not believe the hype that they are ineffective as an inclusion to your ranking strategy.

I like to use my keyword in url, a synonym with hi cooc and CTA in title then another synonym with high cooc in h1.  Careful with anchor text if you use keyword in url.

I would just use cross domain canonical and look into the other issues with your website that have triggered Panda.

They should return.  Are you positive the pages you are analyzing have links pointing to them?  I just checked a few forum and network pages in opensiteexplorer, lrt, and majestic - all brought back results.

Perhaps a sample of the page type you are talking about?

Firstly, is there anything wrong with the move? Could I have lost my rankings for this reason?

It appears there may be an issue with the redirects.  I am seeing strange headers resolving elsewhere beside your new domain.  I would ask your guy to look into them.

The 301 is hitting the new domain but there are 302s in the header response codes pointing to another location as well.  SEE: http://screencast.com/t/53MnOfHCK3

ADDED Below due to a complete lapse in memory of country specific functionality.

Keep in mind that could just be country specific redirection based upon the tool so don't quote me but I would disable the functionality after a move.

My notes on disabling this are to add the following to blog head section:

Did you do a 301 one from one page to its new location or a generic 301?

If you did not redirect page by page you will def see ranking loss.  If that is the case get in there and write the rules that handle each page itself.

If you did redirect each URL to its new location give it some more time AFTER crawling fully and doing a tech audit.

Maintain the single account.  You want to concentrate your efforts into a single location for interaction and max SEO benefit (testing done you naysayers so shush about it not being beneficial)

Studies have show an optimal interaction (tweet) rate is roughly around 4-5 tweets a day.  I have a feeling this is because people are sick of seeing what others had for lunch or when they went to the restroom but keep these numbers in mind.

I would suggest a business keep it below 10 tweets a day at max as you are not an individual user.

I can watch soft 404 errors increase and know there will be a week to two week period with lower SERP scores.

They absolutely can affect your campaign.

If you themeforest themes are meeting your page speed and other needs then there is no reason to go with a different framework.

Themeforest is location where multiple developers input their themes so there is not a general issue to be found.  This is mostly elitism and personal preference you are finding.

However.  Genesis is doing a good job of moving into the semantic web and using proper markup.  It is these kinds of things you should consider in the future.  That is not to say that you can not achieve the same results with your Themeforest purchases either though.

I use my homepage differently for different campaigns but in your case I would target your top level query and location set.

So if you are a general contract that offers multiple services then your index page would discuss your brand and how it is a general contract that provides these services.

This page would link into your individual service silos but be optimized for the jar term (location general contractors etc)

If you serve multiple locations to the point where your silo structure becomes too deep I would suggest looking at subdomains as a way to break apart top level services.

2 cents

Look into Onlywire.

Loaded question.

There have been G employees going public saying they are Panda Indicators.  These are something that are present in the profiles of quality websites.  Your goal should always be to emulate the best of the best so I do not think it is something anyone should ignore.

My data shows they are an influence on certain elements and due to that I am comfortable saying that they are a necessary element to any seo campaign.

Heading over to Quora, Yahoo Answers and related site types is a great way to seed your FAQ type posts.

Try to answer these questions with as much detail as possible as it will gain return readership, especially if their pain was relieved.

You can worry about the finer details if you would like but providing relevant help answers to industry questions is always going to be a plus.

If there is conversation going on in your market I would suggest you be there.

Michael Edwards list the benefits nicely.

You will be surprised the content ideas that arise while conducting conversation in your space if you keep your eye out for industry woes/pain.

Don't stress on this.

Say you write an article about a business/product or two.  One of them catches wind and references that article in an article or a news page.  Do you see a reason for penalization?

This kind of thing happens all the time and it is fine.  So unless you are trying to catch a case of Artificial Growth Syndrome by manipulating recips you've got nothing to worry about.

In your specific case, make sure you are not creating a significant percentage of your total incoming links in this manner since you are actively pursuing.  Maybe create a badge/seal of approval in this case.   As Seen on etc.  Then instead of emailing begging for a link you can email and let them know they have been reviewed and deemed worthy of your approval

Have you filled out everything possible?  Optimized imagery and video?  Filled perks?

Have you slowed down your publishing rate?  If so you should return to former level and stabilize there then recheck graph.

With all the changes going on there are bound to be new contenders in your landscape and you already stated SEO is lax right now so I would move forward with plans.  Ensure you tech/server is healthy and user metrics are positive.

Best to Audit with P Bear consideration and then puto your head down.

I would create a piece of content for the head term and call it the mom.  Then I would create many children with each child targeting a tail set of synonyms referencing  the mother.

These children would live on the target site as well as related topical sites and web 2.0 properties.

Mom and children alike would get pretty and all dressed up with table of content's style interlinking to encourage user engagement and long click like activity, especially on the target site.

Long story short is that both are important and if the content is good you will receive tiered social signals and linking naturally via this practice.

That said... I am a very big proponent of increased site production and if I had to choose one over the other I would take fresh topical content with proper interlinking on my site any day as it means new ranking opportunity, user engagement and almost always new traffic.

With a 50% decline chances are you are being stalked by either a bird or bear.  Heck, they could be teaming up to chase you around.

My recommendation is that you do nothing to your site until someone has conducted a full audit and it is key the person conducting this know what key indicators to watch for in your sites history regarding panda and penguin.

I tend to see much more unnoticed panda hate than unnoticed penguin hate and many people have told me they were hit by a bird but closer examination revealed the real culprit was a bamboo loving bear.

301 is proper but make sure you do a pro and con list.  Is the move necessary or vanity?

If they are repeating keywords in all those links there is potential harm and from a structural stand point this type of linking leaks theme all over the place.  If they were my client I would be pushing to at least remove sub cats.

The link recovery campaign mentioned above is probably called for and I second that a spammy link pointing to a 404 is not a good reason to disavow.  Avoid the tool if at all possible.

Crawl the site with screaming frog.  It will ref in linking page.

First.  Take into consideration what you will loose by renaming urls/images.  Then look at estimates for potential gain.

Try something like

/movie-name/actor-in-poster.jpg

/movie-name/modifier.jpg (Meaning if the move is Judge Dread Original this modifer would be original-move or the date of the movie release/decade etc)

Getting into meta properties of the image is not a bad idea either.  Right click it and look at the properties then get creative not spammy.