If you haven't go multiple emails to track then something like this should work fine:

I take on all your points and would typically agree.  However, for some keywords only a menu link to poor content exists but there is the relationship with the overall content/theme.  What I would say is that the site was live some time before I began work so the pages were 'settled'.  I've just not seen the scenario where all those directories nose dive completely off the radar and for a period the homepage (against some stiff competition) instantly dominate so strongly, previously struggling page 2-3.  I've seen fluctuations but this was a bit whacky.

Just wondering if anyone had come across this kind of scenario which I had/have with a client.

Rebuilt/revamped site that has got problems with thin content we are looking to resolve.  Rankings for the main keywords were ok on page 2 or 3 and being worked on.  Two weeks ago ALL main keywords disappeared from ranking (category pages).  The homepage took over and ranked ALL those keywords at #1!  Bang -straight to top spot.  However happy I was I find this disconcerting as there is a reasonable level of competition.

Today homepage rankings in the main go and directories come back into the rankings at some good positions on page one.  We still need to fix thin and duplicated content!

I can justify the problems and swing with the category pages but the massive cross the board top position for the homepage has been pretty bizarre.

Has anyone else had the experience where the homepage suddenly 'out-performs' in a big way?

As Ryan suggests you still want to FOLLOW rather than giving the bots a dead end as I notice your heading suggests no-follow.

If the aged domain has links going deeper than the homepage you should look at redirecting those pages/directories directly to their associated pages/directories on the new site.  Otherwise all passed link equity will go to the homepage.

Has the mobile/skype link been set up incorrectly, not using the attribute?  I'd check the source code to see what the link actually is.  It should be something like -

I'm working on a site that had a very poor disavow file in place from a previous agency.  I went through the link profile with a fine tooth comb and added a bunch more domains to the file.  Organic traffic has gone up over 80%.

That is not our only problem and there are other factors to work on but the cleansing is reassuring even though we know the profile is pretty thin.  But again that just goes to show quality always wins over quantity.

I would say there may be a whole host of issues hampering ranking but a dirty profile is a must fix, no matter the immediate outcome.  I explain to clients that I anticipate a short term fall and why to set their expectations, then anything positive is a great bonus.

If you mean links to your site from some URL not on your site then you could do the following:

• Do a site:somesite.com/page to see if it is indexed, plus try and find in results
• Check the URL to you is clean - no redirects, no js, no frame etc
• Check their URL in OSE to see if there is any authority.

Otherwise if Google is not blocked from the other URL and there is no no-follow links on the page then Google is not instructed to no-follow.  Therefore a small amount of link equity will pass - unless made negligible by

• The page authority is very poor
• there are multiple links on the page

This is a good point.  I am working on a group of sites on wpengine.  So dev was using something like name.staging.wpengine.  When they went live the directories etc switched to the live domain but scattered throughout the site within the content the URLs remained the same.   ScreamingFrog is your friend.

"Check your robots.txt, meta noindex, and other exclusions to make sure you are not blocking your own content (once you are live)."

Yes, this is far more common than people like to admit.  I'd also add it can be useful to use the Fetch and Render function in Webmaster Tools to check what Google can see once live.  Occasionally robots.txt needs a tweak to stop blocking a particular resource.

In Google Webmaster Tools what happens when you use the Fetch function?  Is Google able to crawl and render the page/s?

http://www.domain.com is the same as www.domain.com.  http is the protocol in which web pages are formatted and sent and would be part of any "complete" URL.

So to answer your question, if there are no redirects in place you can choose either the non www or www version for your canonical tags.  However if you are looking to consolidate to a particular version I would look at updating your htaccess file to create a redirect rule from one version to the other.

#Force non-www to www:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

or

#Force www to non-www:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

As you have a download site and the site is relatively new the first thought that springs to mind is the Pirate 2.0 algorithm - http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change.

Apart from that have you had any notification/s in GWT and is the sudden fall in rankings sustained or fluctuating?

Google sees http://www.seadwellers.com/some-page and http://seadwellers.com/some-page as 2 separate pages.  So correctly you have a 301 redirect in place to resolve any looked for non www to redirect to the www version.  All Moz is saying is that you put in the non www version and you'll have more joy looking at the www version.  There is the choice because you may have links pointing to the non www version.

rel=canonical needs to either go within the tags or the HTTP header.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html

All i'd add to the comments so far is to ensure you have a video sitemap as well

"Other SEO's have never had a problem with this arrangement, but this SEO claimed what they do is secret and for no one else to see."

Run a mile!!!

Yes Martijn is spot on.

The format is language-country not language_country.

http://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

It's highly unlikely that a technical issue would drop rankings within a day or so, maybe drop from URLs from the index though.  Check .htaccess, robots.txt and meta robots etc.

Firstly I would double check what is indexed and what header responses you are getting.  Depending on the size of the site I would use http://intavant.com/tools/google-indexed-pages-extractor/.  Compare with what you believe to be indexed and run the list through Screaming Frog to check the header responses for each URL.

Otherwise I would look at exactly what keywords have been hit, check GWT for any messages and do a thorough investigation of onsite content - Panda; and link profile - Penguin.

This post last year gives a good answer throughout.  In summary yes it does but the edge gets taken off the link 'power', just as a 301 doesn't pass 100%

http://moz.com/community/q/noindex-follow-is-a-waste-of-link-juice

I wouldn't say that the question is answered as such, more an issue identified.  For me it looks like having a directory of URLs having a canonical set to another directory of duplicate URLs messes things up for Google.

I get virtually no visibly indexed single URLs out of around 500 URLs, the directory site: search returns the URLs.  Some URLs were cached in the last day or 2, and plenty throw a 404 Google page when checking for a cached version. Seems flaky all round.

The canonical issue is identified.  This is more of a "i've never seen that" day.  Yes the directory Site: search returns all the URLs, but do a site: search for individual URLs and 95% are not showing as indexed.

yes, a sample page is cached.  It was cached today, however that URL using site: is not indexed. This URL was not showing as indexed yesterday either!

We are working on a site that has a whole section that is not indexed (well a few pages are).  There is also a problem where there are 2 directories that are the same content and it is the incorrect directory with the indexed URLs.

The problem is if I do a search in Google to find a URL - typically location + term then I get the URL (from the wrong directory) up there in the top 5.  However, do a site: for that URL and it is not indexed!  What could be going on here?

There is nothing in robots or the source, and GWT fetch works fine.

"When you hit 10/10, dump the old domain."

10/10 QS - that's ambitious!

You can't have more than one domain used per ad-group.  This would only be advisable to have in a new separate campaign within the account.  But if I understand you right then you are competing for the same keywords so both campaigns go in the bid auction and can push up your CPC.

Sorry for the delay.  I got sidetracked on another project and this client decided they would leave .js as is for the time being so I have not really tested. Initially I couldn't get the Chrome ext to do what I wanted and need to look at Firefox.

Another good tool is Fiddler for sniffing all header responses.

I'd still look at the link profile as well.  Penguin 3.0 is still rolling out http://searchengineland.com/google-penguin-3-0-rollout-still-ongoing-209886.  Look into the profiles/content of the linking domains to rule you out being collateral damage as well.

I don't get it.  The code is only

<iframe src="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/profile-name/xx/xxx/xxx" width="1" height="1">.</iframe>

thanks.  I'll give it a try and let you know.

Any idea why someone would put a sitewide non-clickable one pixel wide link within an iframe in the footer to a linkedin profile?  It has thrown me.

thanks, that's quite handy but not what I need in this case.  This tool seems to switch off .js for the whole page.  I'm looking for something where I can cherry pick the .js on the page I want to block, or ideally move.

Is there a tool, or Chrome extension I can use to load a page, identify the .js on the page, 'uncheck' selected .js and load the page again to check loading correctly?  Even better to be able to defer/move to the end of the file to test.

I agree with Shakur and reusing goals can become messy.  If you do have the need for multiple goals I would also look at creating one or more new profiles in Analytics.  I'm working on a large site that now has 4 profiles, each with goals that make sense within that given profile.  For example, we have a profile name based around chat with a group of chat events and goals within.

This is not implemented.  You have both www and non www URLs along with /index.php for the homepage.  This needs to be implemented in your htaccess file with something like (ensure you backup existing file):

Redirect non-www urls to www

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.4cabling.com.au
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.4cabling.com.au/$1 [R=301,L]

Remove index from URL

RewriteRule ^(.*)index.(htm|html|php)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Your page load is woeful and you need to address - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2F4cabling.com.au%2F&tab=desktop

Also, you have not got canonical tags set up for each page which I would recommend

If it is the case that no URL for .us should exist (there are not new URLs) then you can remove pretty swiftly in Webmaster Tools >> Google Index >> Remove URLs >> select the root URL and select to remove all directories that come from it.

What is the URL?

ah, yes.  I seem to have walked into the middle of a shortener row which made things unclear

So to your original question.  I guess the answer is 'possibly' yes, if the link induced guys to click on the listing it might give it weight.

I'd look at your link profile.  You have a strong connection to weddings which is not your niche, along with suspect directory listings.

I've just had fresh content crawled and indexed that is in this scenario.  Basically we are saying to the visitor "if you really want to know some more boring technical information then expand this, but we don't want to spoil your experience by vomiting all the data at you at once".  Crazy if that is changed.

A reputable business will have a trading address on their site, therefore the actual trading address and listings will differ.  In this case every aspect of NAP will differ.

Looking at the Google result I cannot see the problem.  The shortener leads directly to the result I would expect to see.  If this is not the case then why are you using it?  I have to agree that if you have some problem with that link then posting on places like here will just 'promote' it.

If there is some listing mix up have you contacted Google direct - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/01/08/google-local-now-providing-phone-support-for-verification-issues/

"Changed it to : www.keywordhaha.com/app , www.keywordhaha.com/games, etc..."

Did you 301 existing URLs to your new URL structure?

Have you checked what is indexed in Google with site:www.example.com, or site:www.example.com/directory?

I'm not sure I understand the question?  It seems you are asking if there is any link value in Google search results.  If that is the case then the answer is no.  Links to a Google results page could only possibly benefit Google.

As soon as you change URL structure you are creating new URLs.  So effectively you are giving Google a new site to work with.  The 301's and current link profile will help to pull those new URLs into shape for Google and to have a drop is expected.

I would be focusing on getting some more quality links coming in and create new content to help the recovery process and move into a stronger position.

If you have changed servers I would double check a few things.  This is stuff to rule out:

• Page load speed should be good
• All your pages are still indexed in Google
• There are no warnings in Google Webmaster Tools
• Have a look through your link profile - if the majority of links are to non www then the 301s will shave an edge off the link value from those links.  You are right to do the 301, so if this the case see if you can update those links.
• Have you implemented any other internal 301s to new URLs

Attributes and their corresponding values can be in any order within a tag.

Having a self referring canonical tag also helps eliminate duplication issues if the site produces query strings appended to the URL. There is no ambiguity as to which is the "real" URL.