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I'm talking about having the +1 button on pages of your website - e.g. product pages (info here). If there have been a number of people +1 a particular product then that may help the position of that page organically - I think even if you aren't signed in.
You wouldn't +1 at the SERP stage if you haven't been on the site but your friends might have done which could input into it.
All guesses though 
Aran,
I think that it will have some sort of an affect on the SERP (by considering your different circles) when being logged in to Google.
But also, http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1152948 shows that the +1 button at least has some impact on rankings and therefore we should all adopt it - I'm not sure it will ever be as popular as a like button, but, who knows!
You're essentially creating two seperate sites here so if you want your existing domain to be the primary domain in the search engines I would stick to a sub-folder. Is there a reason why it can't be created in domain.co.uk/courses/ ?
DD
Can you post us the URL or is it confidential? It'd be nice to have a look
Hey,
If you're description isn't as relevant to the keyword you've used to search for your site then search engines may decide to put something more relevant in the description that it has pulled off the page.
To remedy this try and rewrite your description to be more relevant to your targeted keyword.
Hope this helps
DD
Hey,
Have you tried adding the moderator meta tag to the page with the comments box?
DD
Hey,
If you're using the SEOMoz rank checker you'll have to download it as a .csv each week and put it into your own excel document and create your own graph etc - OR - download the .pdf and it's there for you already as a pretty graph.
If you like to keep check daily or any other time frame you can use the SEOBook rank checker plugin for Firefox - you can compile a list of keywords and run this everyday without the need to download a .csv everyday. You can download a history .csv which will contain data of all the past rank checks you've completed at any point thereafter.
Hope this helps
DD
Hey,
I guess if you've exhausted all other possibilities you can either let them return a 404 and leave them be which will most likely do you no harm or 301 that particular URL to another relevant page on your site.
Make sure they are actually returning a 404 first though via header response check.
DD
I'd leave the homepage generic and focus on /tennis-shoes. You can't optimise your homepage for every keyword you want so splitting them up on their own dedicated page is your best option.
DD
Hey,
I'm assuming you mean XML sitemaps here: You can create a sitemap index file which essentially lists a number of sitemaps in one file (A sitemap of sitemap files if that makes sense). See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=71453
There are automatic sitemap generators out there - if you're site has categories with thousands of pages I'd split up them up and have a sitemap per category.
DD
If you check half way down the page it answers exactly what you're after.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
In short, it's fine
DD
..if you can't be bothered finding it:
"Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as ?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL."
Mike,
This is best practice on all sites. Forgetting about the links for a minute; you have two versions of the same page (in search engines eyes) so the first step is to do exactly what you're asking and consolidate into one.
The next step is to ensure your URLs end with a trailing slash because if you have www.url.com and www.url.com/ you again have two different versions.
DD
Hey,
The only 301 you have set up is from www.ablemagazine.co.uk to ablemagazine.co.uk
The other URLs are returning a 200 status which means that you have pretty much 3 versions of your homepage.
In a perfect world I would have made www.ablemagazine.co.uk your actual domain - then 301 all other URLs including the non-www version of the page to this address. When people link to your site they are more likely to use the full address not the non-www version. (Do this if you can easily update all URLs across the site.)
DD
You're essentially creating two seperate sites here so if you want your existing domain to be the primary domain in the search engines I would stick to a sub-folder. Is there a reason why it can't be created in domain.co.uk/courses/ ?
DD
I personally prefer having a blog in a sub-folder as most of my content would be something to do with my 'main' site. I tend to only use sub-domains for completely different content.
DD
I would say it would effectively target both but then again you're adding another word in to your title so pushing your main keyword further down.
I'd perform a small test if I was you and track any change. If it changes for the worse then remove the word 'Cheap'. Try also doing a test on one of your other indexed pages if you're worried about knocking your position.
DD
I'd leave the homepage generic and focus on /tennis-shoes. You can't optimise your homepage for every keyword you want so splitting them up on their own dedicated page is your best option.
DD
SeoBook provide a firefox plugin and you can save a list of keywords if you wish. you just need to put them in a spreadsheet yourself.
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
DD
I've heard of textpattern but never really used it. It's WP all the way for me. You can chop it and change it to fit your needs and the fact that there is so much support out there when you hit a brick wall there's always someone who can help.