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The big opportunity would be to get all 3 sites to rank for primary keywords like personal development. Of course, this strategy will require 3 times the work 
My guess is that the trainers are not prepared to do the work to get each individual site to rank, so it probably makes sense to join them all together. If, in a few months, you find out that you are producing tons of content, you can always peel off the sites with 301 redirects.
Actually, in many other spaces we are seeing extreme host crowding, where you might get 8 or more listings - here was one pointed out by Brett Tabke of Wembaster World
site:plus.google.com "Lived in $city, $state" inurl:about
Scrape the results then extract the keywords.
Many ways to do this right, but the most straightforward is this...
1. Create an about page on your site. From that page, link to your Google+ profile with a "rel=me" link.
2. On all your other pages, link to your about page with a "rel=author" link.
3. Add your site to the "contributor to" section on Google+
4. Celebrate that you now are participating in the largest reciprocal link building scheme since the internet was started. Who knew Google was allowed to violate its own Webmaster Guidelines?
Are you checking to see the word is just on the homepage or any page on the entire site? There isn't really a way to do this in SEOMoz, but depending on the number of pages there are a variety of solutions out there. If it is large enough a list, you can use a scraper for hire like AuthorityLabs or 80Legs
Automation Automation Automation
1. Noindexing Thin Content: Perfectly fine strategy, but it should be easy to automate. Just have a combined word count of the question and the answers provided. If that word count is greater than X, then remove the noindex tag
2. Finding All Content: Good interlinking is all you need. First, you should have a page that lists all the latest threads that DO NOT have noindex tags on them. Second, you should interlink them well. If you have programmers, they might want to look into Yahoo Query Language (YQL) Term Extraction API. If you feed your QA content through this, it will find relevant words. With this, you can then create tags, and then you can show "related questions" based on those tags. This additional interlinking will help a lot.
3. Optimizing the Content: No. Users write questions the way they search for questions in Google. I would let the users control the content, and you just edit it for appropriateness.
Google's host-crowding features seem very out of whack, sometimes causing a single site to control 80% of the first page. I assume this will be fixed at some point by Google, but for the moment you just have to deal with it and try to beat them out.
First off, the biggest concern will be spammers. Use a good captcha system like reCaptcha or OpenCaptcha to control who signs up, although charging money is the best way to keep them out.
Second, don't manipulate the anchor text at the bottom of the user generated stores, just use your brand name.
Third, I wouldn't be hugely concerned about it being a subdomain. Think about all the spam on blogspot and wordpress.com. You won't enjoy the authority status at the beginning that lends them some buffer against the spam, but if you control it at the beginning you should build up your site enough that you can weather some crap making it's way through.
I actually prefer the list, but that might just be me. It makes the page feel authoritative because all that content is exposed. You may just want to make all the data exposed at first and a drop down allows you to hide everything but the specific content, so users can avoid scrolling if they choose.
Rand recommends a pre-emptive reconsideration request if you really don't know the source of the bad tactics.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday
This is a difficult question because the buy-in of the authors (faculty) matters. What you really want is that each blog created is regularly updated with good, fresh, vibrant content. If only 1 of the 20 faculty members is actually going to blog regularly, you will probably want to create a single blog and have them post to various categories. Otherwise, you will end up with one regularly updated blog and a ton of dead ones.
If you have good buy in, I would create blogs on a category basis. It is highly unlikely that these blogs will be accessed by people looking for the faculty members specifically, so they don't each need their own blog.
Did you lose your rankings on 1 particular day or did it happen over a few? Did you get an unnatural links notice in Google Webmaster Tools? Did you lose your rankings for all keywords or just a few you had been working on? Did you get knocked back to page 2 or just lose some rankings but remained on Page 1?
Sorry, but all these questions are a part of the diagnosis of what caused the rankings loss.
It is unlikely that you will see a great improvement in traffic. The real reason you should probably move to this is usability. Individuals might want to bookmark a specific page of the results. Individuals might not have Javascript enabled, or might have browsers that are not compatible with the refresh method. My vote would be to move to rel=prev rel=next
Why don't you run SEOMoz's keyword competitiveness tools to get an idea of what makes them better. Also, take a look at some competitor data sets like Majestic and AHrefs - I always start with SEOMoz, but there is no reason to limit yourself to 1 data set. Chances are they have a bunch more spammy links that you aren't yet seeing, and those are giving them the lift.
I would stop worrying and keep optimizing. I can't say specifically, but my guess is that all other things being equal, a good Places listing could potentially draw more attention. But who cares, keep building, keep promoting, keep marketing. Get exposure any and every way you can.
1. Use the canonical tag. The assumption is that whatever rankings you may have garnered for the "small pack" version would now simply land on the other page. The duplicate content implications are far greater than the potential loss of some rankings.
2. Yes, use the canonical tag on the /index to point to just http://www.yoursite.com/
Different ranking trackers handle this differently - some show places as organic, some don't. However, it is very, very rare for Google to show both an Organic and a Places listing for the same site, so it is possible that you are legitimately ranking for that term but the Places is showing instead.
I would defer to the places experts on this, though.
ReverbNation has an incredible natural link profile that builds up a ton of authority. Spammers and hackers take advantage of this by setting up content on ReverbNation and then pointing tens of thousands of spam links directly at the pages. This allows them to rank temporarily.
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*comment-page-1$
I wouldn't worry about it. Your site is indexed in Google and is, likely, cached. Just because Google's cache: operator isn't working properly for you at the moment isn't a real cause of concern.
The biggest concern with these sites is that their distribution network can easily create anchor text over optimization penalties. If you promote an article on these sites and use manipulated anchor text, there is the possibility that by the end of the day you could have several hundred sites all with the exact same anchor text pointing to you. In a post-penguin SEO environment, this is not a good thing.
I can't see a strong argument against using these sites if you are creating good content and then using your brand or your actual name as the link, but I would be careful with targeted anchor text.
I am spidering your site right now to see what issues come up. The first thing I noticed was the large number of subdomains...
It appears you are opening up your site to other bloggers - just be careful with it.
Our spiders found over 25,000 pages in the first few minutes, which seems pretty high for a site your size (although I know you have around 9000 articles written)
One issue is that your article and a comment page tend to always get indexed, despite having very similar content, ie: /article/ and /article/comment-page-1/
There are many great SEO firms listed on the SEOMoz Recommended page
1. Just use your address and phone number in the byline of your blog posts, along with a link.
2. You can, but it kind of defeats the purpose. The 30 minutes it takes to write a decent piece of content is the least you can offer a blogger in return for space on their site.
3. Guest blogs. I would stay away from article directories - just my opinion, but they tend to be spammy, can lead to anchor text over optimization, and (if and when that happens) it is very difficult to remove the links.
Pretty sure Link Research Tools's Common Backlinks Tool does something similar to that: http://www.linkresearchtools.com/tour/
Although, as a pro member, you could always simply export your competitors and your links from OSE and see which domains they have and you don't
Yes, this will remove them, but if you want to speed up the process you can use the google URL removal tool http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734
Actually, the problem is that Google.co.uk tends to default the user to the keyword "Global" as if Globak is just a mispelling. My guess is the majority of the people searching for Globak actually intended to search for Global, and Google automatically fixes it for them.
Google is probably getting better at removing any value from links like this:
http://www.englishdaily626.com/links.php?008
Most of your anchor-text specific keywords come from links pages like this. Am I correct that a good bit of your rankings losses were for keywords like "english to spanish translation"
I have never seen any evidence that commas are negative, however usability can often drive the social factors that may play more and more a role in the future. I wouldn't make it a priority to change those URLs now, but when the time comes (perhaps with a redesign of the website), it would be worth your while to go ahead and remove them.
No experience with it, and their "blog" links to a twitter account with 4 posts in the last 2 years.
The live keyword analysis tool has always been good, but you really shouldn't be worried about keyword density. Just make sure your keywords occur once in the document and spend the rest of your time writing good, relevant content...
Yep, it is definitely best practice to come up with unique titles and descriptions for the shopping sites. If you have a large number of products, you might want to use a service like TextBroker or ContentWriters.us to handle the work for you.
While many canadians use Google.com, they are going to see results that are geotargeted, so you have done the right thing by setting your geographic target to Canada.
I would definitely select canada for your local pilates studio as well.
Good luck!
Absolutely. We have seen nothing but positives when using the hreflang tag. Of course, make sure you use it appropriately and don't accidentally tag a page that doesn't have a sibling on the other ccTLDs
Google would prefer in most cases not to index search results. What we find best is a method called Tag Seeding, where essentially you are linking to a set of known tag pages that help Google find the relevant categorical results. This helps prevent Google from finding an unending number of pages while, at the same time, allowing you to expose users to your content in an organized fashion.
I wouldn't worry about it. You would see a modest improvement at best. Focus on good content at the moment, this kind of minor manipulation won't be worth the effort.
Many ways - Google discovers URLs through a large number of methods, although primarily through links. I have seen some pretty amazing ways of discovery though...
The rule of thumb is always ALWAYS start with a robots.txt. It is the first thing you should do when setting up a dev environment.
The 301 redirect helps Google remove duplicate content, so it is highly unlikely that it will be considered spam. If the two sites are similar but target different geo-locations, you might want to look up the rel="alternate" hreflang="" method...
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
I have never seen this work very well. My guess is the impact would be neutral. Your better bet is to create content that is useful and then engage directly with your audience via social networks to promote it.
I have seen this done several times to get out of penalties. It appears that Google is ratcheting back, though, and 301 redirects do not get you out of a penalty for very long - sometimes as little as just a few days. I wouldn't count on it getting you out. Your better bet is to clean up the mess or start anew.
Hi Martin,
First off, thanks for the great information you provided in your question - saves a lot of time when there is stuff to work with
1. The reconsideration request should have little to no impact if Penguin was the culprit. Penguin is algorithmic and does not require a recon request. Did the client get an unnatural links notice?
2. If it was Penguin, you will need to do some link removals to clean things up. There is a great SEOMoz post on a case study regarding link removals and Penguin here. There are also both services and tools that assist with bad backlink removals.
3. Determining whether to start anew is always difficult. My gut instinct is normally to start a parallel site (maybe the .org version of your existing domain). Go ahead and start working on that site while you clean up the other one. Eventually, you should be able to get out of Penguin's grasp, but there is no reason to put your entire web business on hold until that happens. Of course, you can supplement your traffic with increased adwords budget, or using local and products to your advantage.
Great to hear you are allowing guest content. Here are some rules of thumb:
1. Don't let your competitors write on your blog. No brainer.
2. Only allow 1 link and make the link simply be citing the author, don't let them cram spammy anchor text in. For example, it would be OK if the link went back to joeselectronics.com and the anchor text was Joe's Electronics. It is not OK for the link to go to joeselectronics.com and the anchor text is Cheap Iphone Cases. Some might disagree with me on this one, but I think that the latter is too manipulative.
3. Go join Ann Smarty's my blog guest http://www.myblogguest.com to attract writers.
Hopefully this will help you find some good content for your site quickly while building relationships with other webmasters and websites!
My guess is that the analytical aspect - which helps decide what links should go where and when - is really where the money is at. I have a friend who worked at Yahoo on their front page algorithm (what news stories show for who at what times) and I can tell you that it is worth millions for them to get that right. Maximizing that equation maximizes page views, which in a CPM advertising arrangement is far more important that just unique visits.
There isn't much information, but my guess is most of their links are dynamically created or modified with Javascript, which means the impact on Google would be minimal.
Your site might not have a manual penalty, but it very likely has an algorithmic one. Looking at the anchor text diversity for your site, it appears the overwhelming majority of links use manipulated anchor text. You probably have an algorithmic penalty. You will need to clean this up and build an organic link profile.
If your site ranks in positions 20-100, you should expect regular large fluctuations. There tends to be a lot of movement the deeper you go in the SERPs.
If you are in the top 10-20, it might have to do with Google choosing to include alternatives to organic in the serps, like a Google Places listing, which has the potential to push back a large number of sites very quickly one day, and then be gone the next.
1. Do you think Google looks at this on a domain level? Or do you think this needs to be done with every page on the site?
Google definitely looks at both URLs and domain as a whole, but more importantly they look at the individual links. You can't simply dilute out bad links except in extreme cases (ie: big brands). Penguin is a machine learning program - it looks at far more signals than just percentages. A combination of enough of these signals can result in lost rankings.
2. What would be a good way to build links fast to the pages, need to build lots of links to be able to dilute the profile. I was considering Dripable, or a similar service, but decided i really don't want to create more spam.What would you do?
You will probably have trouble attracting natural links to the old pages, especially if they are just product or service listings. I would consider creating new pages that have very valuable, evergreen content. Promote those pages via social media, press releases, and more main-stream marketing that builds a healthy link profile. Then 301 redirect your current less-than-savory pages to these.
**3. What would you say the % threshold for anchor text is, i have read on different sources that at least 40% - 60% of links should be branded, url, or generic anchor links. Do you think this is accurate? **
If you really must insist on using a %, then that % should be based on the sites that are already ranking for those terms. Your best bet would be to choose the industry leader in your space and see what their link profile and percentages look like. In most cases, you will be surprised to see that they tend to have much lower thresholds than the others. Bear in mind, though, that your best bet is to probably scrub out bad links wherever as possible - they represent not just potential rankings losses, but a stain on your brand.
At a more general level, you should expect that the majority of your links to any "optimized" page should be greatly varied, brand and navigational heavy, and only use exact anchor text sparingly. Think of anchor text as merely an external validation of your relevance to that term. You don't need to sprinkle many in for Google to get the picture.
Hope that helps!
If you are using only brand anchor text it probably wont (ie: the name of your website or company). Your bigger problem will come from the fact that you only have a few link sources. Ultimately, unique ips / unique domains linking to you is the strongest single off site ranking factor. A diverse set of linking sources will be valuable.
I would go ahead and redirect it. The redirect will pass nearly all of the authority on to the new site, while the link will only pass a fraction based on the PageRank patent.
