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I've been running my agency from a home office for the last 14 years. Those on my team all work remotely, and it works out well.  With a digital agency, there isn't much that you can do in an office that you can't do remotely. I'm very spoiled, so it would take a lot to get me to commute to an office every day. On the other hand, I like to attend networking events and conferences to keep from becoming a total recluse.

Of course, there's a downside to working from home. I don't recommend it if you're an extrovert, which I'm not. I don't recommend it if you can't manage your time and resist distractions. You also have to be able to resist the urge to work all the time.

The purpose of Open Site Explorer is to show backlinks. It is not intended to show how those links are redirected on your site. If your 301 redirects are set up properly, anyone who clicks on them will be redirected to the proper page on your site. However, you would have to ask the websites linking to you to change the URLs if you want those URLs to be updated (and reflected in OSE).

Yes, that's a lot of redirects. However, I wouldn't advise removing them just because Google has updated their index. You may still have a lot of backlinks pointing to the old URLs. If you remove the redirects, they'll be broken links.

Is it possible to use wildcards to cut down on the number of redirects?

Given what you've told us, there are any number of reasons why you have seen a dip in traffic. In addition to the load time (which would definitely have an impact, as Hutch says), I would check the following:

• Did you set up 301-redirects properly when you launched the new site?
• Did the internal link architecture change in any way with the redesign?
• What has the external SEO company done?
• When did traffic start to decline? Sharp decline? Gradual decline?
• Are there new competitors pushing the site down in the SERPs?
• Does the dip in traffic correspond to any algorithm updates? (Check the Panguin Tool.)

I agree with Monica and Hutch. One product with product options is the best practice, but you stated that this was impossible with your current shopping cart. If most of your products have different sizes and colors, it may be worth it to switch to a different ecommerce solution. It may be costly in the short term, but you'll have greater success over the long term.

Add the following noindex meta tag to let Google know that you don't want these pages indexed. See more info here. 

Yes, I can see how merging the two websites would not be advisable in this scenario.  I still think your best bet is to focus on local search optimization, especially if your client is just the manager of one location. As Ryan said, it would be better to work directly with the store owner.

What's the rationale for having two separate websites if both locations are owned by the same person, under the same brand, and sell the same products? These two websites will naturally compete head-to-head for a lot of different queries, not just branded ones. The ideal scenario would be to merge the two websites under one domain and set up individual landing pages for each location. Then, focus on optimizing for local search. If you do this, Google should display the location that is closest to the searcher for branded searches.

I realize that it may be a tough sell to the owner to consolidate the two sites, but I would certainly try to get them to sign off on it.

It's a fairly simple process to transfer ownership of a Google My Business page. See Google's instructions for how to do this.

Add additional locations through the Google My Business dashboard under the same Google account. It simplifies management of the listings and helps Google understand the relationship between locations.

These do appear to be contradictory guidelines until you understand what Google is trying to avoid here. Historically, SEOs have tried to rank businesses for geo-specific searches in areas other than where a business is located.

Let's say you run a gardening shop in Atlanta and you have an ecommerce side of the business online. Yes, you want to get walk-in traffic from the metro Atlanta area, but you also want to sell products online to customers all over the country. Ten years ago, you might set up 50 or so pages on your site with the exact same content with the city, state switched out. That way you could target keywords like the following:

• gardening supplies in Nashville, TN
• gardening supplies in Houston, TX
• gardening supplies in Seattle, WA
• gardening supplies in San Francisco, CA
• and so on...

That worked well 10 years ago, but the Panda update put a stop to that kind of nonsense.  Google understands that someone searching for "gardening supplies in Nashville, TN" is looking for a brick and mortar location in Nashville and not an ecommerce store.

If you have locations in each of those cities, you have a legitimate reason to target the above search queries. On the other hand, you don't want to incur the wrath of Google with duplicate content on your landing pages. That's why the best solution is to create unique content that will appeal to users in that location. Yes, this requires time and possibly money to implement, but it's worth it when customers are streaming through the door at each location.

Check out Bright Local's recent InsideLocal Webinar: Powerful Content Creation Ideas for Local Businesses. They discussed several companies that are doing a great job with local landing page content.

First of all, citations are not synonymous with links, although a lot of citations do include links. A business citation is just a mention of the company, often in a structured format and including the address, phone number, and website (but not necessarily).

Secondly, you'll need to clarify if you are referring to local search results (3-pack, 7-pack etc with map) or the organic search results. Citations (with or without links) have the greatest effect on local results. They help search engines distinguish one business from another, particularly in local search and map results.

Your question implies that citations only have value inasmuch as they help your website perform in search. On the contrary, business citations help customers find the products and services that they need online, even if they never make it to the company's website.  In fact, it can be extremely frustrating to customers when they can't find what they need online, as I recently found out.  Citations can be highly beneficial in terms of "Barnacle SEO" as well.

To answer your questions:

1. There are typically about 50-100 general and niche citation websites that are important for each industry. Anything beyond that will see diminishing returns.

2. Links from citations can be beneficial to an entire site, for the most part, but they are more significant for the target page. Avoid citations from spammy sites.

3. Citations are one of the biggest factors affecting local search results. See the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors.

As I stated in response to your other question,  it's a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines to show Google a different website than what your users see. If you have legitimate reasons for redirecting users to different URLs, make sure that Google can crawl all versions. Then set up rel=alternate and rel=canonical tags to let Google know the relationship between different URLs, including the desktop version. See Google's guidelines about ho to handle separate URLs for the same content.

This is definitely a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines, and I would certainly consider it a black hat tactic. You risk doing more harm than good.

This is what Google has to say about it here:

It's a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines to redirect a user to a different page with the intent to display content other than what was made available to the search engine crawler.

Given that the new shop opened up 2 months ago, you should continue to see improvements for that location if you've covered all the local SEO best practices.

The original location probably has more authority for the reasons you specified, but you may see the newer location perform better when someone is physically closer to that location. You'll have to test that to see. If you are physically closer to the Lower Garden District when you search, which result do you see for local?

I doubt the ideas you mentioned would make much difference. If you've covered all the local SEO best practices, you should focus on adding hyperlocal content to the Lower Garden District landing page. Talk about some of the best XYZ within walking distance of your shop, any events nearby, add photos of the interior of the shop, etc. Make sure you have blog posts pointing to that landing page as well.

Yes, I remember you. It was very nice to meet you! That was a fantastic event. I wish I could make it to Moz for every event, but it's a bit of a jump from Atlanta.  You guys need to take the show on the road and bring an event to the Southeast. (Too bad "Mozcamp" is taken.)

I just got back from LocalUp Advanced, and I can tell you that the line at the original Starbucks was way out the door. I took a picture and then walked down the street to get a latte at Local Color Espresso Bistro. One of the locals at the Pike Place Market recommended it.

The Sky View Observatory was worth the money, even in rainy weather. I wanted to see Chihuly Garden and Glass, but it was closed for a special event while I was there. I'll check it out when I go back for MozCon (whenever I can make it to MozCon).

You'll want to use pagination markup (rel=”next”/rel=”prev”) to handle this. See this article for specific guidelines.

I'll chime in to wholeheartedly agree with Ryan and Travis. This is a particularly valuable link from the standpoint of local SEO, given that it's coming from a local new source.

The links appear to be pages that were automatically generated when an image was attached to a page or post in WordPress.  This is fairly common with WordPress. Fortunately, these pages have the following meta tag, which tells the search engines that they should not be indexed or crawled.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"></meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

In my opinion, the best time to start investing in SEO is when a website is in the planning stages and throughout the development process.  Technical and structural issues can have a tremendous effect on how a site performs in search.

While you are actively developing content, it's a good idea to engage an SEO provider to work with you in the process.

You were right to redirect 1 directly to 3. It's not a huge problem to have short redirect chains, but the best practice is to redirect to the current live site.

You may find that some website owners will question your motives and be suspicious if you are asking them to replace an existing link to a high authority site like Wikipedia. You might see better results if you suggest the link as an additional resource that supports what they already have.

Okay, I see. That's often referred to as the "Authoritative Onebox."  The searcher's location may be influencing results the most in this case, so you'll definitely need to build up the other local signals for the Michigan location. Unfortunately, I don't really have anything to add to what you've already mentioned.

You seem to be referring to local search results (with the local pack and map) rather than organic results. Local search results for Michigan will not show up for someone searching in New York unless they specifically add a geographic modifier. Otherwise, they'll get local pack results for their own location or they may not get local results at all.

Are you trying to get the Michigan G+ page to show up higher than others in organic results? If so, why would this be preferable to having your website show up first for branding searches?

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the question. If so, can  you clarify?

I would start with keyword research and come up with a large bank of alternatives for the "dog training" keyword. Look for synonyms, alternate word endings (train, trained, trainer), and co-occurrence terms. Then rewrite the content with these to be far more natural. It may require some heavy rewriting, depending on how bad it is.

Definitely get rid of the over-optimized footer links. If you do all of this, you shouldn't have to worry about the banner in the header. Header content is often the same across an entire site.

The hard part may be explaining to your client that on-page optimization isn't so much about exact-match keywords as it is about topical authority.

Are you tracking conversion goals or events in Analytics at all? If not, you might want to set some up on the old site so you can get some before and after stats. I would also keep an eye on some of the data available through Google Webmaster Tools, such as pages indexed, crawl errors (after re-launch), search queries, and crawl stats.

Search volume is only one factor that you should consider when analyzing keywords. At a minimum, we look at the following during keyword research.

• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty (Using Moz's Keyword Difficulty tool)
• Relevance (How relevant is the query to the client's business, website, products, or services? This is a subjective number that we score as a percentage.)
• Searcher intent - There are lots of different ways to classify user intent. See this, this, and this for more info.
• Google's perception of user intent - Analyze the SERPs to see what types of results appear for that query.

The last two are key for your issue. Take a look at the SERPs. Every result for "odor eliminator" is for a product rather than a service, and the top ranking sites are powerful brand sites like amazon.com, walmart.com, and homedepot.com. On the other hand, if someone searches "odor removal service," they are clearly not looking for a product. If my assumptions are correct, that query is 100% relevant to what your client is offering.

My advice is to focus on the more relevant, less competitive keyword in this particular case. .

Understood. Just post more details as you learn them, and I'll do my best to address any issues.

Yes, Google can index dynamic content. Whether or not this will affect search performance depends on multiple factors.

• What platform is being used?
• How are URLs affected?
• Are the blocks of content creating a duplicate content issue?
• Is it possible to optimize the title tags and other on-page factors with that kind of variable content?
• Is content hidden on the page and then revealed based on user activity?
• Will you be able to set up canonical tags?

With more information, I might be able to point you in the right direction.

In the WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Reading.

Find "Search Engine Visibility." Is "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" checked? If so, uncheck it.

The duplicates will likely affect affect organic rankings for the entire site. Local pack results are somewhat affected by organic signals, so that could be affected, too.

As for whether or not to 301 redirect the duplicate category pages, do you want users to see them? If not, why do you have them? The 301 redirect will prevent users from seeing those pages.

If you want users to see them, use a noindex tag at the page level, or use the robots.txt to exclude them from search engines.

Your friend has to give Google a reason to send searchers to his website instead of the many well-known authority sites that have the same verses.  Is he providing a lot of unique commentary, or are the pages mostly bible verses that can be found on thousands of other sites? If it's the former, then he should be okay. If it's the latter, he may want to focus on adding more unique content.

I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but I'll give it a shot based on what I think you mean.

Just swapping out the NAP will not create unique content for those category pages, so you'll want to add a canonical tag with a link to a single category page that is not location specific.

Panda is site-wide.

Is timing the only thing that makes you suspect Penguin is the cause of the drop in traffic? What does your backlink profile look like? Are there tons of spammy links to your site? If so, then you may be right about Penguin.

It's impossible to say what caused the drop based solely on the information you've provided. I highly doubt that a few hours of downtime had anything to do with your drop in traffic.

Other questions to consider:

• Have you made any significant changes to your website within the last three months? (What kind of maintenance was actually performed on the site?)
• Are there any new competitors pushing you out of the SERPs?

Google has indicated that they don't use Schema data for ranking purposes.  Adding the schema will not make it less likely for you to rank for "Autism Alternative Treatment Arizona" than you are now.

Do you provide any services to clients in California, or is your website more of a resource site with information about autism? If it's the latter, you really don't need to worry about queries with a local intent. Focus instead on making your site a topical authority with high-quality content.

Do you have a single physical location or multiple physical locations?

The "unique landing page" in your first quote refers to landing pages on your website. In most cases, the best practice is to have a local landing page for each physical location. When you claim and verify the Google My Business listing for each location, Google will automatically set up a Google+ page for that location. Link both the GMB listing and G+ page back to the associated landing page.

It looks like you are set up with the Magento shopping cart. There have been several other threads addressing the same issue. You may find some useful information there.

http://moz.com/community/q/temporary-redirects-on-magento

http://moz.com/community/q/magento-302-error-needs-to-be-301-http-to-https

http://moz.com/community/q/magento-1675-302-redirects-how-to-fix

If that doesn't help, I would recommend contacting Magento support.

You can find the 35 temporary redirects that Moz reports using the Screaming Frog tool. You'll see the redirects for individual links under the "Response Codes" tab. Look for the "Redirect URI" column.

The fastest way to find all of the redirects is to go to "Reports" > "Redirect Chains." This will show all the redirects on the site. I think you have to purchase a license for this feature.

If you are trying to find redirects that have been set up for incoming links from external sites, you'll have to access the .htaccess file. I also do a site:domain.com search in Google just to see if there are old links still in the index. Then keep an eye on 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools after the site launches.

Use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl the site. You'll be able to see the response codes from each page and the redirected URL's. A temporary redirect will have a 302 status code.

I agree with Hutch42 and RangeMarketing. In most cases, the best practice for SEO is to create a self-hosted blog under the same domain as your main business website, if applicable. There's no reason to create more than one website (or blog) to achieve the same purpose. It dilutes your link equity (juice).

Creating a separate blog for the purpose of creating a bunch of links back to your website could be seen as spammy and cause more harm than good. There are much more effective ways to get links to your website with good quality content and digital PR.

Local SEO is a different animal than organic SEO, but organic signals have played a much bigger part since the Pigeon update. External factors that affect your rankings in the local pack include business citations and reviews. Check out the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors. Backlinks do have an effect on local search but probably not as much as they do on organic search.

Below are some great resources for local SEO:

• Mike Blumenthal
• David Mihm
• Andrew Shotland
• Phil Rosek 
• Local Search Forum (Linda Buquet)
• Whitespark (Darren Shaw, Nyagoslav Zhekov, et. al.)
• BrightLocal (Myles Anderson)

Assuming the plumber provides services at his customer's address, it would be considered a service area business (SAB). Consequently, you would need to add it to Google My Business with the "I serve customers at my business address" option.

While it's much more challenging to get an SAB in the local pack, there's a lot that can be done to improve organic performance for location-based queries.  Assuming you've covered your bases with on-page optimization, you'll want to focus on content and off-page optimization.

Add content with a local focus:

• Does the plumber belong to any local organizations like the chamber of commerce? Be sure to include those on the website.
• Is he active in any local charities or fundraising events? Include those in his bio.
• Are there any local laws or regulations that you can add content about on the site?
• Add case studies or testimonials that includes location-based content.
• Is there a way to add photos from the target city?

Off-page

• Try to get links from websites with a local focus in your area, including the local organizations, charities, etc mentioned above. Some old-fashioned local PR will help.
• There are quite a few local search directories that do not require a visible address.
• Develop a process to encourage customer reviews.

Mike Blumenthal posted a breakdown of a Mediative study in September that you might find useful.

LOCAL HEAT MAPS – LOTS OF ATTENTION, NOT SO MUCH CLICKING

What makes you think it might be a theme issue? Both the Moz toolbar and the Screaming Frog tool show the title as "Yoga Übungen - Mit visuellen Guides, Videos & viel Inspiration," so I would be very surprised if Google was reading a different title from the page.