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Are your slideshows at the top of the page? Read this tweet (from the czar himself) which says there was a refresh Feb. 6th of the page layout algorithm. Cutts: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/432940645200588800

It targets ads above the fold, but seems to indicate that lack of written content within easy viewing reach can also be undesirable.

Read more about the algorithm here: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html

Other possibilities may be that the text in your slideshows isn't html, or you don't have alt tags for the images, or the slideshow slows down the site, or that's all you really have for content on the site? Some slideshows are just not SEO-friendly, aside from algorithms and the case that they are generally not user-directed, and hence not user-friendly.

Good luck! Sounds like the the kind of haystack I find myself rummaging through as we speak;)

Aren't duplicate title tags more than a minor issue?

Another thought...In my experience I watched a page which was ranking in the top 3 drop to under 50 then come back up again for its targeted phrase. As it turned out, once I changed a different page which happened to be targeting the same phrase, everything calmed down. It's just an observation, but it seems once I removed the possibility for confusion about which page was 'the' page, Google ranked the right one.

good luck.

I have verified quite a few listings and I am allowed to verify most by phone number, but not all.  I'm pretty sure it's based on some sort of 'trust' factor. I did have a phone option appear after I waited over a month fcard post card to no avail. I would say take your only option and verify by post card

Wow, I can say at the very least that your process shows perseverance! The advice that follows comes from a background in sales and marketing, less so in expert link-building.

Your appeal to your target doesn't seem to offer a solution to a problem. You are stating that your product is 'useful,' 'beneficial,' and 'important'. Don't tell them. Show them. Does your article 'explain how to harness the wind so your community has water to drink'? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba) Maybe your humanitarian market is not concerned about the lack of drinking water in African villages, but they do have a unique concern, and you need to connect with it.

Keep in mind, more so than a target market of accountants or phlebotomists, humanitarians are moved by emotions. They are who they are and do what they do because they care. Choose your message accordingly.

If I can say one last thing...less is more.

Go get 'em tiger;)

#5 Unequivocally Wordpress + Genesis!

Wow, you are very quickly and easily making me much better at what I do:) Thanks for that.

I actually just updated the code a couple days ago by adding the Expires code and fixing the redirect. Maybe the previous double 301 redirect could be the culprit? Or - something I mentioned in another question - there were a ton of 404s because of a blog that wasn't redirected to the /blog subdirectory correctly, which I fixed recently. Could something like that cause the server to work to hard and return a 500 server error?

I'll definitely check out the logs and Pingdom.

Great information and advice.

I absolutely do appreciate the longer explanations Paul, so don't stop!;) I'm one of those people who HAS to know the why, not just the what. And, Andy, I laughed too.

So let me ask some specific advice: if the homepage has a header linking to pages we desire to rank well, and the footer also has links to those pages PLUS links to a bunch of area-specific pages (i.e. Town A Keyword, Town B Keyword, Town C Keyword) which aren't remotely as important to rank, should I remove the links to those area pages from the footer? Will that increase the link equity going to the more important pages?

The odd thing is that the two pages that rank better than the others are not linked to from the header or footer at all. I know competitiveness of the keywords plays into that but it can't be coincidental.