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First, it's important to note that you can never expect the same results year-over-year for a page that's similar to a previous one. You need to take into account competition, algorithm changes, etc.

One glaring issue I find on this page is that you have almost no unique text. Google looks very unfavorably on pages that have little content; your page only has about 100 words. I strongly suggest writing more about the product; what it's made of, it's dimensions, history, anything.

After inspecting the code, I see that your meta-description wasn't updated. It starts "Find your perfect mid-year diary 14-15 with TOAD." - but should ready 15-16, no?

Fixing these things may not reap the benefits you're looking for, but they're certainly a start. Good luck!

Antonio is absolutely correct - in the 10th line of your homepage's code is a no-index tag.

To elaborate more on his second point, the reason the page: _kaya3976.com.au/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php  _is the only one being shown, is because Google sees that there's a website, but can't actually index any visitor-intended pages - and is therefore showing your WP Login page. You definitely want that to be resolved ASAP, but I would make absolutely sure with whomever's been developing the site that there isn't a reason it's de-indexed currently.

No one can really answer a question like this without knowing more details about your product. However, generally speaking, I would say to try to do the following:

• Break the process up between at least several, related steps.
• Keep the design simple, and the clutter and/or extra content to a minimum during the process.
• The more a user can click rather than type, the better. Drop downs are generally preferable to text-input fields.
• Keep the design, headings, and placement of items consistent.
• Ensure that, if customers are inputting sensitive data, that the entire site or section is https (getting an SSL certification). That way their data will be secure.
• If you're worried that people may not be willing to spend 10-20 minutes, consider having a preliminary amount of data necessary for sign-up / login / etc. and then allow them to add more information before accessing the product directly.

These are just some general tips, but I hope they're helpful nonetheless.

Never allow someone to take or steal your content. Ever. It's never good for your site, and it's just a matter of time before it causes an (even bigger) issue for you. Duplicate content hurts both parties, even if you added it first. Moreover, the backlinks wouldn't be worth the harm.

Send them a take-down request to their website administrator. If, after a short amount of time, they haven't responded and/or taken your content down, file a complaint with Google regarding stolen content.

My company recently created a website for a huge moving company with many locations. The site's very successful, in part for a few things. Of those, some are pretty conventional:

• Create location-specific pages with unique content about that location - be it your business' location's history, about the town/city, etc. **Do not **allow these pages to be similar to one another. They must have unique, rich content.
• Depending on the amount of locations, you may be able to add those new location-based pages in the footer. I'd say after 20 or so, it might become excessive.
• If you have a blog, you should definitely write about those locations, any new openings, events happening in the areas, etc.
• It should go without saying, but make sure to optimize for each location where appropriate. However, do not over-optimize for any area unless it's the main hub for business.
• Schema. Schema all over the location information.
• Make sure your 301s are organized and all-encompassing.
• Not at all necessary, but occasions like this are great for reviewing your website's design and content.

There's surely a lot more you can do, but this list is a good starting point, I'd say. Hope this helps!

Hey there,

Since I obviously don't know the specifics of your situation, I'll give you an answer based on generalities. I'd say that there are probably 3 possible reasons that they'd lower the position offered to you:

1. They found someone they feel is more qualified for the position.
2. They no longer want to fill that position.
3. They simply don't feel that you currently fit the criteria, but that you might after more experience.

However, it doesn't matter why they might have offered you a lower position, I think what matters is if you'd be happy at the one currently being offered. If not, then be gutsy and ask them frankly why they offered a lower position - either you won't be hired (which you don't want) or they'll explain and you can make a more educated decision.

If you're happy with the lower position, or you feel that there's high potential to move-up, then go for it. The worst case is that it doesn't work out, which would leave you where you are now.

Please keep in mind that this is all subjective opinion - I, and no one else, should tote it as anything other than that. Good luck to you! I hope it works out for the best.

First, an H1 should pretty much never be in the footer. H1 tags are meant to be the lead-in for the page and the content therein. It should tell visitors and Google what your page is about, using keywords if possible. That said, there isn't inherently anything wrong with having 2 or 3 H1 tags if your page is long and has several different bits of content that don't fall under one category.

Second, while it's important for a company's name and brand to be relatively prominent on a website, having it on every page as an H1 tag is extremely excessive. If I saw it as a user, I'd think it's not only spammy, but strange since it's presumably in other prominent places on the site (in the header, content, some H tags, etc).

I strongly recommend that you remove these H1 tags from your footer and, if having the brand name within pages is something your client really wants, have it placed more organically in the content.

Playhazel has a stronger call-to-action in name. This is stronger in most ways, I would say.

Hazelbox doesn't sound game-related, so unless you have strong branding for the name, it likely won't be as clear or strong in conversion.

Of course, I'm basing all of this input on inference and experience, and not empirical data. So I would do some research into either and think about branding methods before I made a decision, were I you. Good luck!

To answer your questions:

1. Not necessarily, but I'd be very careful. Content that's very similar isn't far from content that's duplicated.
2. I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but that's not an area I'm well-versed in.
3. What I can tell you is that you may want to consider having 1 website rather than hundreds. That one website can have a primary, large navigational section solely for locations and information about locations and varying services. This is probably something you'd have to discuss with the franchise owners and many others, but the fact that you have many sites and not one, means that you're missing out on SEO. It may benefit you greatly to consolidate everything into one - especially if you're trying to strengthen your brand. I did this with a client of mine recently who has several locations across the country, and they're doing much better in terms of SEO and conversion. But the most important thing to say is that measuring and preparing is often a good step.

Tim's correct, but I'll add a couple of things:

• Never take any analytics platform as gospel - meaning, each of them have their inaccuracies. This is one of the benefits to having multiple platforms running analytics on your site(s).
• In this case, I would recommend following Google's count. Not only because it's higher, but because their analytics are going to be more accurate (generally) to what's happening in SERPs. When I say the volume of page issues is a factor, what I'm considering is that either Google is simply seeing more errors than Moz, or Google's crawl is itself in error (which happens on occasion). Either way, that would need to be resolved, so solving the issues Google's provided should be paramount.
• Lastly, the Yoast plugin is wonderful in many ways. Don't take everything it gives you at face value, but more often than not, it'll be a fantastic resource for on-page SEO. There's also a plugin simply called "Redirection" that can setup 301s from a page that's 404ed to a more relevant page, should you wish to go that path. Either way, always make sure you have either a dedicated 404 page (with actionable content so users aren't lost), or some manner of populate-able content.

Good luck!

Nowadays, Google doesn't really care about footer links all that much. And I agree with your reports - there are WAY too many links on your homepage. I'd remove all or at least most of the "locations we service" links, and instead, move them to a navigational menu item - either in a sidebar or at the top. You could even just have a "Locations" page with a small excerpt about each area and a link to them from there. Either option would be preferable to having so many footer links to smaller pages.

I also see that on your "customer reviews" section, each person's name links to their Facebook profile. I'd suggest removing those links for a few reasons. First, it's more links on your homepage (and Facebook will have disavowed them anyway). Second, these customers may put very unprofessional things in their profiles, so you may not want to direct visitors to their pages.

I hope that helps!

It seems like something about either your search functions, or the e-commerce functionality, is causing these duplicate pages. Without having access to that information, I can tell you that the best option from my point of view would be to redirect all of the "incorrect" urls to the "correct" ones using 301s. I suggest taking a look at this page on Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) if you're unfamiliar with how that works. No matter what platform your website uses, this should do you good.

Logan's correct - though I'll add that along with branding and which is most fitting to you and your target customers, I would take DA (domain authority) and historical data into account when deciding.

There are effectively 2 ways you could handle this properly:

1. Consolidate all of those duplicate pages into one page; keeping these listings one a single page and using a gallery / ajax / etc. to bring up one specific car at a time.
2. Choose one page from each set of duplicates as the base page, and place "rel-canonical" tags in the duplicates.

Option 2 is likely the better of the two in terms of SEO and your business, but both are technically viable options.

There aren't really any negative SEO implications to having a client's site backlink to yours. The only way there would be is if their site is spammy or something to that effect. This is true both for having a link to their site in yours, and vice versa (which I only bring up because of your last question).

There's also nothing wrong with offering a discount on the next purchase that customer makes. However, I've found that most customers are OK with doing this without having to do that. I've actually set it up so that, in our contracts, we have a clause that says we're allowed to, at our own discretion, add our logo and a link back to our site in the footer of theirs (with certain reasonable restrictions, etc).

Either method works. Asking how they feel about your service is an equally valid method of achieving this. You're good to go!

The only reasons I can think of are:

• the developer might have been unfamiliar with Wordpress back-end editing.
• the developer is rooted mostly in PHP and thus favors that structure.
• there was something specific to the client's website that requires this method.

There are several possible reasons, and I think the only way to proceed safely would be for you or your client to get in contact with the previous developer and ask. Aside from that, looking through the PHP to see if there's a genuine reason is the next safest option.

Zippy,

Something that no one else has mentioned is that whether or not this is a good idea depends very much on 2 things:

1. Is Sales@example.com the only means by which a customer would normally contact you?
2. Does your business have a quick sales funnel? (Put another way, is the process between leads and conversions fast in comparison to the average in your industry/region?)

If the answer to either of these is "No", then I would suggest you not add an email in your page title. Typically, you only want to put strong attention on a specific method of contact if that's either your only method, or if that method leads to a significant amount of quick-funnel conversion. Otherwise, you may end up doing more harm than good.

I hope that's been helpful - cheers!

I would say that example.com/category/postname is the better way to go. It's good for SEO and, as an example. many popular (and even marketing-specific blogs like Hubspot) use categories before a post name in their URLs.

The only real downside is that the URLs themselves will be longer. Though, unless you expect posts to end up on SERPs. that shouldn't matter too much. Another thing to consider is: if some of your posts would fall under multiple categories, then you'll have to choose between them each time. Again, not a huge issue, but one to consider.

I'd say your gut feeling is right - in fact, you may want your first post to be a simple "apology" for being absent due to being busy (or something to that effect), and alerting people that from now on you'll be posting often. Address the issue, and present the solution you've already come to.

Not to sound cheeky, but neither is preferable. The solution with lots of thin content means you have a lot of pages that hold little to no use to a user, while also putting you at risk for, well, thin content. The solution that keeps all of this content on one page means that your page is poorly targeted (especially bad since this is a service page), that the content will be difficult to digest for users, and that you have no real options for navigation to a specific service.

Since it's clear you know you're in a "lesser of two evils" situation; my recommendation would be to go with the approach of having many pages. You can at least target these pages better, and it leaves you open to adding more content later on. However, this option is a bigger risk : bigger reward. You might get penalized for thin content. But if time is the absolute in this circumstance, I think that relatively thin pages may be more manageable.

As an amendment, might I recommend adding a couple of universal content sections? Meaning, within these thin pages, along with the 100~ words of good, unique content, having a content section that's the same throughout each, so that you have more content on these pages without sacrificing as much time. Something like links to relevant blog articles, customer testimonials, or a personable explanation of the company's methodology regarding the delivery of services.

Generally speaking, if a page's content isn't specific to one location, I'd advise against putting location information in the title of that page. You mentioned that you're aware of the option to make pages specifically for locations - that's really a much better solution than to stuff your title tags with city names. Rather than the title tags, however, maybe you could add content that specifically targets some or all of those locations (depending on quantity of course).

You could also add a footer section that links to each location page. The point is that there are many ways to up your rank in different cities. Using title tags on general pages may not be the best option, though. I realize this doesn't directly answer your question, but it's what I'd advise a client if they were to ask the same thing.

Even if you don't add news too often, it may be best to treat each news post like articles. Meaning, show the most recent 5 (just an example number) on the initial page, from which visitors can view older or "previous" news articles. That creates an organized and simple system for visitors to view the happenings of your company.

100% saturation is impossible to achieve while maintaining any semblance of value. Not only because any proper page inherently has navigation, internal linkage, and myriad other elements, but because to write content about a subject in that amount of detail, one would invariably need to write about sub-topics and related topics. It's just not feasible. But, and here's the kicker, you wouldn't want 100% saturation anyway.

Rich, dynamic content incorporates that which is related to it. Strong pages link out to others, and keep visitors within their media cycle, if not churning them lower down. Good content is content that holds information that's both detailed and general to a topic. I would say, at most, the highest saturation point that still remains within strong SEO and content optimization is about 85-90% when taking into account all page content - and even that's pushing it, really.

I would strongly recommend removing the one that's not doing well locally and adding the content to the structure and content of the other website. Your client should also consider condensing the two businesses into one.

I say that because from what you said, it sounds like he views the two service types as different businesses that only share a name. This is very likely counterproductive, and I'd have to assume means that both websites are competing against one another in SERPs regarding branded keywords.

Touting all of his services as one business would have a lot of different benefits; but is there any reason he's treated them as separate businesses? If so, my advice may not be prudent - but it seems unlikely that there's a good reason to do so.

While your site looks very nice and clean, there are a handful of things that are hurting it:

1. There's no header navigation on the initial page (the left-hand widget isn't "initial" in this sense).
2. There's barely any text on the homepage.
3. There doesn't seem to be an H1 on the page (certainly not at the top - even though it might seem that way, the slider content may not be getting picked up by Google as such).
4. Effectively, your homepage is a long list of products. Take a look at Amazon and even smaller ecommerce sites. Your site, and specifically, homepage, is lacking content.

I'm sure with a genuine audit, you could get loads more information, but these are all things you may wish to consider looking into.

I'd suggest doing that, yes. Not only would it be more beneficial to users to have information based on their location (as most people would search for trainers near them, not just search for trainers and the sort the data by location) - it's also good for SEO to have location-specific urls and such. That's assuming that you're both concerned about local search, and are making efforts in that area already.

Do keep in mind, however, that the rest of your site (both in terms of structure and content) should reflect this change. Not just links, but the way they're presented, and possibly even the order by which you present content on base pages. Furthermore, if you go this route, be sure to take advantage of locale-based terms (including name, NAP, etc.)

3 points you should make to your bosses:

1. There's no such thing as "blocking" another site in that way - and in fact, you're **only blocking your own sites **this way. You're competing with yourself, which is silly to do.
2. The more rich, unique, and well-rounded content you have on a website, the better it'll do. These should absolutely be consolidated into one website. Think of it this way: instead of using 9 smaller sites that are getting 11% of your effort each, making one site that gets 100%, and will absolutely do better in SERPs, is the way to go.
3. You're much more likely to make mistakes, have errors, and duplicate content if everything's across different websites instead of one. That's a huge potential issue.

I can think of dozens of other reasons you should centralize everything into one site, but these are probably the biggest ones.

It's hard to say without knowing the specifics and how these two measure up regarding their import, but I'd say give the landing page a go. After a month or so, if it still hasn't started ranking as well as you'd like, maybe consider tweaking the content even more on the landing page. Assuming this landing page could really move some KPIs for you, it's a semi-risk worth taking.

When a page is a continuation of content, or a "set" of content - so to speak - the best practice is to use tags that signify it being this way. The most common occurrence of this is search results.

The way that's done is through elements like rel="prev" or rel="next" or similar - and as such, relays to search engines that the pages with these elements marked are within that content set. Because of this, it's likely beneficial for titles and meta-descriptions to be similar if not the same.

There are a few different points here that I think are prudent to make:

• Having a good/great domain authority has no bearing on the actual quality of the content regarding users. I would be hesitant about making decisions based on two non-correlative data points. Quality in this context refers to the value the average user perceives that content to have.

• As such, here's an example: Say I have a page hosting a video that's 90 minutes. If 1,000 people visit the page, let's say that 100 came there with an actual interest specifically in that video. Of those 100, maybe 20 will watch the entire thing. So, 20 out of 1,000 people getting to 90 minutes isn't going to give you a high average. This is obviously an abstract example, but it makes the point that video length means nothing as a metric without any insight into these other key numbers.

• That said, yes, Google is imperfect and won't measure anything perfectly. But a general rule for content of any type is to expect only a certain percentage (usually not very high) to be highly engaged. It's an inverse curve structure in terms of graphical representation.

Without knowing your website's url, it's hard to say. But generally speaking, generic keywords like "lights" are always going to be in a weird flux. So many different companies, mediums, videos, and everything else use that word in some aspect. It's possible that something time-specific (think "holiday lights" for instance) could be taking over the search temporarily, or that your site simply isn't as optimized for "lights" as new-comers. Even news articles and musicians will come up when searching for that term.

Another thing to consider is whether or not whomever's searching has their personal search data enabled in Google. And let's not forget location-based search, which will assuredly have an effect on SERPs. The bottom-line is, there are so many factors in play when it comes to generic search terms that it would be very difficult to tell without a lengthy analysis of your data and that of others.

The good news is, as you mentioned, "lights" likely isn't the most useful search for potential customers. People typically search for something product/service specific when it comes to something like that.

I've checked the source of that page, and your tag is in the body of the page rather than the head. Specifically, the tag is on line 937 at the start of a paragraph, while your head ends at line 107. I suggest reading this article to learn a little more about the syntax of this particular tag and it's uses. It can be a little tricky, but that article should point you in the right direction.

No, once it's revoked you no longer have access to do that. I think he meant in the case that you hadn't lost access yet.

However, I feel I should ask, why do you want data for a website that you no longer have access to? If they revoked access, it stands to reason they don't want you to see their data. If you're still working with/for them however, then why not simply request access again?

I don't believe there's any legal action that can be taken as it's not actually illegal for someone to link to your website; regardless of what harm it might cause you. Unfortunately, there's too much truth to the saying that law is always 10 steps behind technology.

However, I do believe that if the problem persists, you have the option of emailing Google support and reporting the website(s) in question - stating your case and the specifics may go a long way in ensuring that it doesn't happen again.

Before you do either of those things, make absolutely sure that you can even get the URLs you'd prefer. It may be that the reason your current URLs are less than ideal is because the simpler versions weren't available at the time of creation.

That said, if there are a substantial amount of posts, engagements, etc. it may not be worth making the changes. For Facebook, I suppose it can't hurt to create a new page and merge the two, favoring the new. But Yelp is a little trickier regarding that sort of process (or lack thereof).

Lastly, ensure that any webpage (on your site, partner sites, adverts, social media, etc.) that links to the Facebook and Yelp pages is updated with these new URLs.

Of the 4 points you mention you've seen, I'd say the only one that's entirely incorrect is #3.

1. Only use H1 once: True. Think of it like a book title. That's the most important thing, so nothing else should share that prominence.

2. H1 is crucial for SERP: **True. **This is what Google looks to, after your title tag, for information about your page and the content therein. This reaffirms that your metadata, keywords, title, content, etc. are all related - while also showing visitors what this page is about (Google values visitor experience more and more with each update).

3. Use H1s for subheads. False. Think back to #1 - H1 should be reserved only for the 1 absolute most important thing (which should be your title).

4. Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance. Kind of true. Google DOES look beyond this (and even parses your body-text), but with each lowering of prominence / heading, Google gives it less weight. #4 is true in the sense that this weight is lessened significantly, but it's incorrect generally - your content is still very important.

I hope this has been helpful to you! Good luck!

I'd say this depends entirely on time vs. reward. If you have the time and resources, there's no reason these shouldn't be included - especially if they're still ranking. They may very well continue to do so, even after the new structure you've implemented is recognized in crawls. However, if time is a factor and you need to prioritize only what's truly necessary, I'd suggest figuring out the actual worth of these pages and making a decision. What role they play in your sales / related, how many users and conversions they generate, etc.

Prashant,

You could be told many different things depending on who you ask, but I'd say from my experience working at a company that makes websites, the answer is that there is no definitive answer.

That being said, there ARE helpful tips I can give you:

• "How many links?" is a less important question than "What kind of links?" Consider the position of each page in regard to where it is in your sales funnel (if at all). The closer to the bottom of the funnel (bottom = conversion), the more straightforward your navigation and direction should be. For instance, you wouldn't put a link to your "About Us" page on a landing page or contact form, because it directs traffic away from conversion and the flow of your site.
• The modern design tends toward simplicity - which means that while it's not necessarily a problem to have so many links, it will be confusing to your customers and lead people away from the content they were initially searching for. People are inattentive and fickle, so you want to guide them.
• Links need to fit logically with the content. If a page is about a service X, don't link to service Y unless it relates to service X, and you write your content in a way that makes sense.

I hope that's helpful for you!

I don't see how that would even function. What comes after the root of a domain tends to be levels of folders and sub-folders, in cases where there are levels. So, example.com/hats/red-hats/big-red-hats makes sense because big red hats would be within the folder red hats, and red hats would be in the folder hats. Having your urls reverse this would not only not make sense to users, it wouldn't make sense to search engines.

If your thinking was that the closer to the domain a specific keyword is, the better ranking you can expect - think again. For any website - but especially for an eCommerce site - the structure of folders and subs is very important, and helps both users and search engines find what they're looking for and parse your site.

Bottom line: I strongly advise avoiding a strategy like what you're suggesting. I can't foresee it having anything but a negative influence.

I can think of 3 options that may help:

1. This is the sort of thing for which a secretary or assistant is really best. They can assess which calls would be necessary to forward to her, while taking the secretary's/assistant's time to explain what's on the site for those that aren't. Growth comes at a price, and it sounds like your client is at that point.
2. Your client gets a second phone line, which would be used as the number shown on her website's contact section (or wherever those who've parsed the site would see it). Those calls could be forwarded to her original number, and so long as she gets a service that tells her which of her lines is getting the call, she can know (to some degree) which calls are more worthwhile.
3. She can set up an automated message that directs callers to visit the website for information before following through with the call. This may deter some business, however, so this option would require weighing the current time lost with the possible lost business.

I hope that helps you out!

Your 404 page is a great way to serve visitors links to the pages that would be most relevant in general to them. It's also a great opportunity to show your brand and personality - and yes, as you mention - blog articles are a great next step for these pages. However, make sure that it makes sense for them to be there. If a visitor is within your blog domain / subdomain, then go for it. If they're not, consider a combination of things.

And yes, you can have more than one 404 page. Whether having multiple versions makes sense is up to you.

Dmitrii isn't wrong, but I feel it's always important to determine which version is best for your branding, marketing materials, and which is most memorable/useful for your customers and leads. Some sites do better with "www", and some without. Don't leave it up to chance for Google to choose one for you.

I would change listings, social media information, and other external items once you've launched the new site. Think of it this way: your website is your main source, while the rest are secondary. Your website should always take precedence when it comes to change, especially when considering consistency with your users. If they go to Yelp, Google+, etc. and see "Bakery Y", but your website still says "Bakery X", it'll be both confusing and inconsistent.

As for your second question, about the catering business:

• Facebook: you can create a new page (try to get a short and related URL!) and "merge" the old one into the new. Ensure that you clarify this change in a post, however, as not to confuse followers!
• Yelp: Much trickier. In this case, the only option may be to try to change the name of the current listing, rather than creating a new one. Not only are reviews something you never want to give up, the length of time your listing is up actually plays a roll in rankings on Yelp (similar to search engines for websites).
• Google: This is actually a combination of the two previous. You can keep the page you have now (especially good if you have reviews) and change the name and branding. If there's some reason that's not possible, or if you've yet to create a solid Google Local / My Business, then you may choose to create a new page and contact Google, asking to move assets to the new from the old. The latter is more complicated, and can take a long while, however.

Nope. You're in no way required or expected to tell someone why they've hit a 404. As long as you have a page with content, you're doing OK. Any effort beyond that will only benefit you.

Generally, redirects should be *instantaneous (depending on how you do it, this can take a short while). However, the permanence of this takes, I'd wager, about 1-2 months. A redirect tells search engines that when a user goes to a page on your site, like www.example.com/old, you (the webmaster) would like the user to be redirected to www.example.com/new. After time, search engines will eventually do this automatically. The presumption, however, is that this is intended to be a permanent fixture. So you'll need to ensure that the old url is essentially phased out of existence.

To answer your direct question, if by "relevance" you mean the rank, quality score, etc. - this is done is as much time (again, with varying experience). However, be aware that the link juice passed from domain A to domain B will often be a little lost.

First and most importantly, I strongly advise against ever suggesting a client "play the system". Everyone gets caught eventually and it's silly to make such a big risk for such a small benefit. How long before he's caught? Who knows. But he will be, and neither of you wants that.

I recommend removing his home and mother's home as locations in terms of Google Places. Then, optimize the website for these locations. Make mention of the areas he serves often (but not to a spammy degree), and create **good, long, unique content **for location- or area-specific pages.

It's showing as duplicate content because aside from an image and caption, there's no content on this page. Low-to-zero content pages that follow the same template / structure will often be seen as duplicate content. Sorry to say, but these pages should either have content added to them, or deindexed. The latter is much easier, of course, and both are almost guaranteed to improve your site. But adding content would be the better solution. It'll add value to those pages, you won't be removing the pages from indexation, and it can incentivize engagement.

I would suggest 2 things:

1. Hire someone to do an audit of inbound links for your website, or have someone in-house perform the audit. While it may be beneficial in some regards to move your site to a blank slate, your domain age (how long your site's existed) will be lost - that being a factor in SEO.
2. Never hire anyone without knowing their tactics and requesting to look at prior projects they've worked on for your own edification. From what you've said, it sounds like the person you hired 2 years ago used some black-hat (risky cheat) tactics. It's great to have help, but unless you're informed about whomever's helping you, it will always have the potential to backfire.

Hi Robert,

If you go to your profile: http://moz.com/community/users/3868035, you'll see an "Edit" button a bit to the right of your profile picture. When you click that button, you'll be taken to the "edit" view of your profile, where you'll see fields where you can tie your social accounts to Moz.

You'll see icons for Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. From here, all you need to do is add your +example into the field associated with Google+. If you don't know your +example name, you can open your Google+ page and find it in the URL. What you need to enter is what comes after (and including) the + in the URL.

I hope that's been helpful Robert, cheers!