Not a clue. I'd guess they're nofollowing the internal links to better architect what internal pages are ranking, but maybe they intended profile links to pass juice, and implementation wasn't what they'd thought it be.

I'm 99.9% positive the answer is no, they do not pass link juice. JS-redirected links are all hinky like that.

I think you've gotten a decent diversity of opinion here, the rest is all just going to come back down to you and risk tolerance. As Dr. Pete said, there isn't a single right answer. It's going to come down to a try-and-see.

I agree with RankSurge here. The more time spent preparing reports, the more you're paying for data and less for actual performance.

Ask yourself why you want week-over-week. Because you don't trust the vendor? Find someone you do. I'd recommend monthly reporting. Week-to-week just isn't going to be actionable, and you're liable to see information you honestly don't want to. I've seen it commonplace for rankings to swing so wildly week-to-week that moving off that data is folly, you really need to look at month-to-month and general trends.

As for confidentiality of client information, it depends on the contracts that the vendor has with them. I've had a client ask me for a business reference before, one that they could talk to live. When asking my clients to volunteer one of them made a good point by saying they took a risk on me without a reference, so why should they alleviate someone else's business risk for me live. They're happy to provide a testimonial, but being available to speak live to a potential client for one of their vendors can be too much.

No worries. Yes, the x-pack is the local listing that sometimes appear in a SERP. X because sometimes it's3, sometimes 7, and occasionally I think there can still be 10, but not sure there.

When doing keyword research I'd recommend pulling numbers both without and with the geographic identifier, phrase and exact match. Use Insights for Search for some good geographic data, too.

I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of diversified opinion in this thread, but here is my opinion.

First, to answer your direct question, I do think localized optimization in <title>is going to slightly affect your non-geographic rank. You've got 10oz of SEO Juice to split up amongst however many keywords you've got in your title, and pulling a geo-identifier into that is going to dilute the non-geo a bit. Maybe. Possibly. Probably.</p> <p><em style="background-color: initial;">That being said</em><span style="background-color: initial;">, you have to consider what keyword you're targeting, and whether or not they're triggering the x-pack in a SERP anyway. This speaks to question #2. If you want to rank nationally and locally, and who doesn't, consider your separate search verticals. If your target queries aren't triggering the x-pack, then take into account search volumes on those geo-specific terms.</span></p> <p>If you want to focus on local, non-map placements, I'd use the following <title> methodology:</p> <p><em>pagesubject city, stateabv | brandname</em></p> <p>e.g Oil Change Plymouth, MI | Midas</p> <p>Of course there could be a substantially more in-depth exploration of this topic, and I'm hoping one of my fellow inbound marketers will expand upon the subjects I didn't touch.</p></title>

Hi Everyone,

In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain.

Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?

I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of diversified opinion in this thread, but here is my opinion.

First, to answer your direct question, I do think localized optimization in <title>is going to slightly affect your non-geographic rank. You've got 10oz of SEO Juice to split up amongst however many keywords you've got in your title, and pulling a geo-identifier into that is going to dilute the non-geo a bit. Maybe. Possibly. Probably.</p> <p><em style="background-color: initial;">That being said</em><span style="background-color: initial;">, you have to consider what keyword you're targeting, and whether or not they're triggering the x-pack in a SERP anyway. This speaks to question #2. If you want to rank nationally and locally, and who doesn't, consider your separate search verticals. If your target queries aren't triggering the x-pack, then take into account search volumes on those geo-specific terms.</span></p> <p>If you want to focus on local, non-map placements, I'd use the following <title> methodology:</p> <p><em>pagesubject city, stateabv | brandname</em></p> <p>e.g Oil Change Plymouth, MI | Midas</p> <p>Of course there could be a substantially more in-depth exploration of this topic, and I'm hoping one of my fellow inbound marketers will expand upon the subjects I didn't touch.</p></title>

No worries. Yes, the x-pack is the local listing that sometimes appear in a SERP. X because sometimes it's3, sometimes 7, and occasionally I think there can still be 10, but not sure there.

When doing keyword research I'd recommend pulling numbers both without and with the geographic identifier, phrase and exact match. Use Insights for Search for some good geographic data, too.