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Have you set up Google Webmaster Tools, checked for any flagged manual actions, submitted your sitemap, and run a fetch request?

Glad you figured it out. I honestly didn't think it would have been the canonicals. I'm a little surprised that the bots didn't just choose not to respect the suggestion as opposed to blanking your site from the index. Didn't think that was even a possibility from incorrect canonicals. Good to know for the future though in case anything like this comes up with anyone else's site.

Not exactly. Its not so much that the canonical "supersedes" an index, follow tag.... a canonical tag establishes equivalency while a NoIndex is more like a "does not equal." The Index, Follow is still there and being seen by bots as they crawl... in fact, if you had NoIndex on a page with a Canonical Tag, it may not even see the canonical at all since you told it to NoIndex the page. The Meta Robots Index tag comes first allowing the bots to crawl and index the page but then the canonical sets up equivalency to a separate page. So if your canonical tag is being respected, it doesn't wind up doing the same thing as a NoIndex (though it may seem that way) nor does it do the same thing as a 301 (though there are similarities in how equity is passed). Since a canonical establishes an equivalency, you'll find that the Canon Page will eventually take the place of the Canonicalized Page in search results because you're telling them the Canonicalized Page _is _the Canon Page & that the Canon page is the right version of both.

I took a look at all of the usual suspects as well... which amounts to pretty much everything that everyone else mentioned but I was intrigued by this issue and thought maybe another set of eyes might notice something that was off. Nothing was wrong in the page source from what I saw, no issues crawling it myself and I didn't see any penalties. Normally I'd think that if your homepage wasn't appearing for branded organic searches then a penalty was levied against you but when that is the case the homepage is still normally find-able in a Site operator search. M__aybe it is related to all the backlinks that were lost/deleted in the past month but I'm not sure why that would be the case unless removing the homepage from the index was a Penguin response to link issues... but I was under the impression that peguin was devaluing the link source not the link recipient and deleting/removing links seems to be a preferred method of handling penguin-related issues. So if there is a relationship between penguin and your homepage being deindexed then I am not sure at all why nor am I certain how to fix it as I'm not seeing anything in particular that screams "linking issue" at me. (though I only did a fairly cursory inspection of things)

So I am stumped. Whenever the issue is figure out I would love to know how/why this came to be.

If a URL was indexed and has since had a canonical added to it pointing to another page, it will eventually disappear from results. Basically the pages gets consolidated with its canon page. If the bots choose to respect the canonical tag in that instance, all signals get passed to the canon page while still allowing the page and information to be accessible by human visitors. As such, there's no reason to keep the page in the index because you're telling the bots that another page is the correct page instead. This is not the same as NoIndexing a page but will eventually remove a page from the index much in the same way that a 301 will pass equity along to another page while eventually removing the redirected page from the index in favor of the page being redirected to.

Organic sitelinks in the SERPs are an automated feature. The best way to try to get them to show up (no guarantees) is to have good, quality content; ensure that your internal linking structure is done well; have a proper sitemap; and breadcrumbs may potentially help. Even then, they may only show up for very specific searches. I've found that getting them to show up for your branded searches tends to be easiest.

You are able demote sitelinks that you don't want showing up in Search Console but you can't pick and choose which exact ones you do want showing up. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334?hl=en

Step 1 should really start off with something more along the lines of "Create a page around a product or service we provide. Determine related search terms, expanded terms, relevant informational queries, FAQ questions, LSI terms, etc. that could be used to enhance content of the page and draw traffic." Don't create a page for a single term. Create a page because it actually provides the user/customer/visitor with something worthwhile and relevant that you provide/offer.

Step 2 should not be all about Social Media. SEO _is_how you get people to see/find your site. Social Media is a useful tool along side this but its more than just posting up a new page or a new blog post two or three times a week to your Company Page and somehow magically drawing in millions of followers... its about building a community, conversing with the community and related pages, cross-promotion, making yourself into an industry leader and authority on relevant related subjects. Now, if this is more of a B2B operation then you might want to consider a few other things. Because when thinking about it from that perspective you'll want to do some research about the major social networks and forums that members of that industry use. While Facebook, Google Plus, & Twitter seem like great ways to push out a new site page and to start getting some traction, if all your industry professionals who would care about your information are on LinkedIn and PartnerUp then you'll want to prioritize that. Or if they congregate around a handful of G+ community or Facebook pages then you'll want to work towards being able to post your information there and/or be posted by the admins & users of those groups.

Press Releases sound nice but make sure that its a good, legitimate press release service. Back in the day there were tons of these services out there and they were really good at getting your post on one or two decent sites.... and 300 crap sites... all of which were 'useful' at the time but definitely lead to some headaches involving disavows when that became a thing. Just because your content is being syndicated across a whole bunch of sites doesn't mean that its necessarily a good thing... for all you know, the bulk of those pages are buried so deep and NoIndexed instead of having a cross-domain canonical to the 'original' so there's no traffic to & through it and no equity being gained. And hell, since it could be creating 300 instances of duplicate content and most of those sites probably do the same for tons of other 'clients'... those links you do get will potentially be from low quality, low domain authority, and fairly spammy sites.

Step 4 sounds fine. You might also want to look into something like HARO (https://www.helpareporter.com/), offer up an article to a relevant business journal as an editorial (and don't try to 're-sell' that article to multiple sites with 'a couple tweaks'), reach out to leaders in related industries for legitimate cross-promotional opportunities, look into opportunities to speak with or offer insight to the writers of relevant industry blogs, etc.

In Search Console it is not possible to see All Queries and All Pages at the same time but you can see All Queries related to One Page or All Pages related to One Query. If you're in Queries and you click the Double Arrow >> symbol on the right, it will add that Query to the Query Filter, thus showing only that query. If you then click on Pages, it will show you All Pages as filtered by the Search Term. You can do the same in the other direction. If you're in the Pages list and you want to see how all your queries relate to a specific page, click the >> next to the page you want in order to filter everything by that page. Then click into the Queries list and you'll see search terms as filtered by that page. You can also enter filters in on your own by clicking the down arrow next to Pages or Queries, clicking "Filter", choosing 'Contianing', 'Not Containing', or 'Is Exactly' and then entering in the terms or URL you're looking for. (Just make sure to clear those filters when you don't need them)

If you need a better idea of how certain search terms relate to pages, you can do that in Google Analytics as well to get a breakdown of what search terms are more prevalent for what type of medium to certain pages. But in Analytics you get the issues of anonymization from being logged in causing the data to be hidden behind Not Provided.

As to the third part of your question... there can often appear to be a correlation between some of those offerings and improved site metrics which could be signals for improving organic rankings. But there is no definitive cause and effect that I can point to that would say "yes, always put these in" or "no, they never work." More specifically, having legitimate and useful reviews can help improve user engagement and can help to improve conversion rate. Having a decent amount of reviews can also allow you to add schema markup to the page that can add star ratings into your organic results which could improve your CTR. Will it always do this? No, but it can.

Videos are also a good way to improve user engagement, if its a decent and relevant video. Especially useful if people like it enough to share it either because its incredibly informative on the relevant subject or really amusing. This increase in time on page, lowered bounce rate, shares, etc. could improve organic rankings but there is not always definitive proof that this is the case. Videos can have the opposite issue as well... sometimes they just want their question answered or the information presented to them instead of sitting through your 2 minute video about the product offerings or how to install it.

Good images is just good business and so are good descriptions. Having relevant images on your page can also help you take up real estate in image search as well as generic organic SERPs. Having an informative description can help with a variety of ranking signals. But you need to make sure that you are not going overboard, stuffing keywords, or attempting to game the system. For some people, adding 5 images with great, informative descriptions could be helpful. For others it could be 10 images. But for some, those 10 images could wind up inadvertently hurting them if they don't things according to best practices.

Highlighting relevant blog posts? Well, that could help with retention on site as people are more likely to find the information that they need quicker and easier. Promoting flow through your site to the right information is a plus to UX which would make people more likely to come back to your site or to suggest this site to other people. It could also help with the flow of link equity to relevant pages that would then benefit from the infusion and possibly rank better. Or if overdone, or not done properly, it could have no effect, little effect, or the opposite effect as you clutter the page with extraneous links or dilute equity by pointing links at irrelevant pages.

Email subscriptions. This won't necessarily have any sort of organic impact but can help in the retention of users who are then slightly more likely to return as direct visits.

If you're looking for a magic bullet to increase your rankings via user engagement, there is no such thing. There are things to consider best practices and things that work for the right types of sites and things that work well if done properly.

Google Search Console only provides you data for Organic traffic. If you have an AdWords account and are running campaigns, you can see how those campaigns are translating into Paid Traffic numbers. In AdWords, you can connect your Search Console account for a specific site to the AdWords profile for that site to get a better comparison of how your paid & organic traffic interact (https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3097241?hl=en). And if everything is set up correctly in Google Analytics, you can see in the Source/Medium or Channels sections how your traffic numbers are broken down by Organic, Referral, Paid, Direct, etc. which can help give you an even better understanding of how various types of traffic interact with your site.

Maybe everyone is right... Correlation does not equal causation.

Moz sees that there is a correlation between higher ranked sites and +1s but that does not mean +1s cause higher rankings. It could be that higher ranked sites are more likely to get +1'd.

In a situation like this, I would turn to your Google My Business page and make sure that the locations or distance that you serve is set properly in order to reach all of the surrounding towns that you do, in fact, serve. It doesn't necessarily hurt to include your small town name in the meta title. While that will help with more immediate local traffic, Google does change titles and descriptions in the SERPs for certain terms they feel the page is relevant for but do not feel your other info adequately expresses. Google will take into account the location of your business but if your GMB page shows that you service a nearby area, they won't just discount you because you're in nearby small town instead of Big Town. In cases like that, you may find that Google alters the page title in the SERPs to show the name of the bigger town or completely remove mention of any town. So just because your title and description don't perfectly reflect every single area you might work in, that doesn't mean you can't show up for those local searchers.

It can also be useful to make pages on your site specifically talking about the services available to those bigger surrounding towns. So even if your homepage is more targeted to Small Town, you can have an organic landing page devoted to Big Town A and Big Town B with all your info, service information, a blurb about the town and how your business interacts with that area, and a nice call to action and/or contact form for that town. Just make sure not to copy/paste to create tons of targeted pages like that. You want everything to be nice and unique so there are no duplication issues.

Google Webmaster Guidelines suggests you should "Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines."

Are you referencing this crawl tool? http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test

Those two options aren't as opposing as you might think. The first option deals with having a highly specialized task/item/service that works for multiple industries. The second option expands on services more. Either one can work depending on what exactly you are offering as an industry and what people in those industries are searching for.

Take into account the fact that relevancy is a thing. Just because you don't use the exact word you thought you needed to use, that doesn't mean you can't be found for it. Also remember that everyone searches differently. Just because you believe people should find you for a certain set of terms doesn't mean that they will all always be entering in those terms that exact way every time into Google. So its usually best to expand the way you talk about your industry, make sure to use not only corporate buzz words but also more generic terms that are related, dig deeper into your analytics to see other ways of how people are finding your site, and take a look at Search Console to see what other terms are out there that you have impressions on but poor Click through rate.

Overall, this is part science and part creative writing. You need to find the right terms for the most qualified traffic for the right page for your site... but you need to make it sound good and look good without seeming stuffed, spammy, or deceptive. There is no easy formula for word placement that will function 100% of the time. You might find that **[field reporting] **is a better term in general so might want to use that in your homepage but then [incident reporting] might have better clickthroughs when paired with [medical] and [defect inspection] could convert better when paired with [construction]. Or you could find that the search volume isn't that different between most of them and that **[field reporting] **is the main way that all people are looking for your services.

Yup, Google has been doing this for a few years. The same page can have differing descriptions depending on what the search was. Usually this happens in the case of a page that is relevant to a search with a description that doesn't necessarily appear to be relevant enough to said search.

This doesn't make meta descriptions useless though. Meta description is still a useful signal to denote what your page is about. But for arguments sake, lets say you have a page on Widgets (why is it always widgets?). You have a page on Widgets and your main product is Red Widgets... so your meta description expresses "Seller of top quality Red Widgets!". But someone searches for Green Widgets. Your page is relevant for Green Widgets because you sell those too but your description doesn't mention them since they're a less important product to you. So Google alters your description for that search which pulls some of the info on your page about Green Widgets so that the Green Widget searcher know your page is actually useful to them.

Links from those social sites are often either not crawlable or nofollowed... but what they do actually do is add to your social proof and add new avenues for people to find & share your content. We use Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest regularly for our ecommerce sites and share links to our pages where relevant. Pinterest has actually lead to a wonderful uptick in referral traffic on our site and our photos are regularly shared on people's design boards. This traffic tends to spend less time on site and view fewer pages... but even if only a handful convert then its still people we wouldn't have had if we never tried. Facebook doesn't send us as much traffic but is almost turning into an added level of Customer Service and allows us an easy means of conversing with potential customers. We also share other related pages' content, comment on other pages, and attempt to make ourselves a useful resources for people. Seems that nowadays if you have a business then its almost expected you will have an associated Facebook page. Twitter on the other hand has turned into a stream of pointlessness in my opinion but its likely the nature of our sites that make people less likely to interact and strike up a conversation. More work can be done there as we've seen people who have built great fan and customer bases through their twitter accounts.

All of these things though make us look more available, more professional, lead to more sharing of our content which in turn leads to more people who learn about us which in turn leads to new customers and more sales.

There is nothing "bad practices" about allowing a non-existent page to 404. People often times forget that a 404 isn't a signal that something is broken and needs fixing, its just a status code that returns "Not Found". Sometimes it makes sense for things not to be found on your site because they were never there in the first place. 404s eventually stop being crawled and indexed.

You shouldn't just bulk redirect things to your homepage though. Its always best to have a 301 point to the most relevant page based on what the original page was. If there is no most relevant page, have you considered 301-ing them to one step up in the site navigation? (i.e. a category page or hub page)

I more or less agree with EGOL. Directory Submissions are a thing of the past and are likely to get you in trouble nowadays. Getting backlinks is becoming harder and harder everyday. You need to diversify more and make sure that all those links to you look as natural as possible. It's not a bad thing to do linking yourself to get that initial push but the best possible linking strategy is a naturally occurring one. Make sure you use all relevant social avenues open to you... Facebook pages, G+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, StumbleUpon, and so on as long as it make sense for your site to be there and you keep up with posting. Hopefully those will generate natural links back to your site as people learn who you are and grow to like your site.

We use CSS Hidden content behind a clickable "Read More" on  pretty much all of our sites in places where we want certain things viewable above the fold (mainly for aesthetic reasons). We've never seen any issues with Google not giving proper weight to the hidden content or flagging it as cloaking.

In your case though, I'd be concerned that having the transcripts for 12+ videos hidden on one page will make it less likely that each video will be found as easily as they should have. E.G. A video that would be perfectly relevant to a search may not appear in the SERPs for relevant terms because it is overshadowed by one or more of the other 12+ video transcripts. IMO, It might be more search-friendly and user-friendly to instead have a hub page linking out to the individual pages hosting the video and its related content.