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Moving to a new domain means new link building. You can 301 all you want but it's just not the same. Close, but it's never feels as pure as your first.
I'd business-case it. Will the keyword-as-domain give you some ranking power? Probably. Will the boost be worth the $2500? Well...maybe. Also take into consideration what happens if someone else snatches that domain up. Then $2500 might not look so bad when faced with a competitor with a new full tank of SEO gas.
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>
I think you should consider query-intention a bit here. What is a user searching for 'kitchens' looking for? It's a very general term, so you can't really tell.
If I were you I'd focus on local terms, ones that were more query-matched to content you have.
So, yeah, I'm agreeing with you 
There are no automated link building solutions, however SEOMoz does offer lots of education on the subject:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011
Many good blog posts in these categories:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/category/4
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4
A good list here:
http://www.seomoz.org/directories
And an excellent tool for starting the process here:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
You may also find this Labs tool useful:
Yes-ish. You're going to want to read this:
Well this is an easy one.
_Will search engines consider the "-" url a different one? _Yes.
Do we need to 301 the old url to the new one? Yes.
I typically look at both numbers, but when making judgments I default to phrase match. I feel it better takes into account long-tail.
You need to use a rel-canonical tag. You can read a really informative post by Rand on it here:
This thread has some good opencart-specific advice regarding implementation:
PA and DA are primarily based on links. It looks like your competitor is out-shining you there. I'd make your major next step a link building campaign.
To expand on Nakul, and after checking out your site, I'd say your best-case option is to use rel canonical to indicate to Google which your preferred page would be (in your case, I'd say the first page or a view-all page). This will address your duplicate content issues.
As for duplicate title, using a canonical will take care of the SEO penalty associate with that. If you just want to see a smaller number in that red box in SEOMoz, just add a variable to the end of the title tag based on the page.
Not logged in, no location set, I've got you coming in 6th naturally here, just below a block of videos, and well below the fold. Might be that many searches, but you're below what I would consider just-as-relevant (and then Wikipedia, sigh) content. 1% CTR is not bad for slice #6.
I believe the practice of pointing negative backlinks to a site has been in use for quite some time now. The prevalence has remained somewhat low, however, due to the relative difficulty of obtaining the quantity of links required to sufficiently negatively impact rank of a competitor. I've seen this practice used as a form of ORM to decrease rank of negative press.
As it gets easier to game this system, I'd anticipate Google making an algorithmic change to consider the sudden building of low-quality or spam-identified links. I'd expect that they'd be ignored rather than used to determine rank or quality. How this would effect IP neighborhood metrics, however, I don't know.
While I can't substantiate anything meaningful with the data I've seen thusfar, I will go as far as to say I'm pretty sure Google already takes this into account on some level, negating any negative passed. Almost like automatically assigning a nofollow. It's just gut though.
Ah phpBB. First, do this:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=543997
That'll fix your ugly URL problem.
Then see what kinds of errors you get. If it still spits duplicate content, you can rel-canonical.
I said this in a question earlier...today I think. The threshold for bounce rate creating a negative impact for SEO is very high, to the point where you don't need to worry about it.
With regards to using Pinterest as a marketing channel, ask yourself what the benefit to your user is. Are you going to create intriguing SEO images that people will want to save or share? If so, I don't think I'd spend that capital in Pinterest, rather I'd try to turn it into good link bait.
I haven't seen anything good on whether or not Pinterest generates a measurable social signal that could influence a SERP, so I can't speak to that.
For your primary target I've got you lagging behind Yelp x 2, Yahoo Local, and a semi-heavy with a Places page. All in all not bad for a month's work!
Checking on some of your secondaries, you look like you're again fighting directories and Deep-Steam. They appear to have the local advantage, but once you get your Places page and some more citations coming in, I think you'll start to bump up.
Since it appears you're targeting locally, I suggest taking a spin over to getlisted.org, and make sure you're listed in the places they indicate. Give David Mihm's local ranking factors a good read, and put that to use as well.
All in all, you're making it happen, just keep trucking along!
Bounce rate threshold is super high. Super high. If it wasn't, every single blackhat would be using it as a negative-SEO tactic.
In short, you don't have to worry about it unless your company owner homepages his browser 10,000 times a day.
And, if we're going to get all pedantic about it, I'm sure if Google's really looking at it that much it'll take into account single-IP bouncing. So 1 IP bouncing 10k times a day would be looked at entirely differently than 1,000 IPs bouncing once a day.
Assuming all other things equal (keyword relevancy, anchor text, etc) I'd go for site 3. The DA is good, but I'm really liking the PA/DA combo on that one. Second choice would be site 1.
If you mean comments left through Facebook Connect, then yes. Pretty sure that happened in November last year.
As for how Facebook influences search rank, I'm pretty sure a book can be (and probably has been) written about the subject. Also, this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings
Give the "link:" operator a try, or see if OSE has any data. I'd say use GWT, but I'm assuming since it's just a forward there isn't an account set up.
First, a bad bounce rate doesn't always mean a bad page. There are several reasons one might see a high bounce rate as a good or neutral thing.
With regards to your page, however, I'm not sure. I'd say look at what your entrance keywords are. Which entrance keywords are triggering the bounce? I'll bet if you look at that data, it'll make more sense. 9 times out of 10 bouncing people are landing on a page that doesn't have content to fit their query.
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.
Ahem:
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While there is no authoritative answer from Google or Mr. Cutts, general consensus amongst my SEO peers that were just IM'd by me seems to be multiple titles on a page is bad. I agree with the consensus.
Years ago, multiple <title>s was a common blackhat technique.This is back when you could successfully stuff meta keywords and it'd actually work. As for now if it would just be neutral or actively negative...I don't know, but my gut leans to it'd be actively negative to some degree.</p></title>
You're right, the home page would be / in that case. See that a lot on WordPress-based sites and such.
I can't diagnose absolutely without direct access, but I'd say check for URL malformation based on entry. / may not really exist for functional purposes. Or, you just aren't getting any home-page traffic.
Also, make sure your GA code is actually on your home page and properly firing.
Hello and welcome to the industry!
Since you're new, you're going to want to start here:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/social-media-marketing-tactics
Do a lot of reading. I mean a lot. Read and read and read. Then make sure you read this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media
That'll make sure you don't fall into the SMO for SMO's sake trap.
You've joined the right community if you're looking for help, and we'll all be glad to help you get started. Your initial query, however, is really really vague. If you can get more specific we can provide better, more directed help.
I hate scrolling through the Q&A section and seeing a 0-response question surrounded by so many answered and responded-to ones. Whenever it's one of my questions with no responses I always get the feeling I'm being ignored. Know, CJ, that I'm not ignoring you, I just read your question and honestly have not a clue.
It sounds like it could be a campaign bug. It happens, I've had them happen to me a few times. I've had duplicate URLs tagged as duplicate content one crawl, changed nothing, then next crawl it was fine. Sometimes the crawler hiccups. If I were you I'd pull a manual crawl (research tools), or use Xenu to run one, and see if it's there too. If it is, you can see the referring URL, or at least more information. I could be of more assistance then.
If it doesn't appear in those, well, campaign crawler hiccup/
Passing through multiple 301s is not the best solution, but it works. I've never seen it generate problems of any substance, even on some huge sites.
Worst I've ever seen was 4 passthroughs, old versions of multiple pages (date-sensitive) being 301's to new versions for 4 years. I didn't set it up that way, just inherited it. Didn't see any serious loss of juice.
Of course optimal would be to have everything 301ing to the right place. And depending how you're 301ing (.htaccess, IIS) might be as easy as doing a find/replace to get it all in line.
If I were you, I'd schedule a call and ask questions. Like what the benefits of having your content syndicated across the network is outside of name recognition, how they handle duplicate content problems, how they ensure your content is used properly, etc, etc. Put the onus on them to alleviate your fears. Chances are it won't be that beneficial for you.
With regards to your fear of not providing a URL, this is probably a form mass-email to pre-identified targets that was just badly executed. Call nSphere directly, and ask to speak to him. See how that goes.
Swing on over to your dashboard. Find your campaign, navigate to crawl diagnostics. Under the first errors/warnings/notices box you'll see something like:
Last Crawl Completed: Feb. 9th, 2012 Next Crawl Starts: Feb. 17th, 2012
Your dates, of course, will be different.
I'd check with your delivery network. Might be something on their end. Or it might be that my user-agent switcher isn't working properly (it has happened before).
A further hmm:
Xenu 403's, but Screaming Frog doesn't.
In the interests of not starting a subdomain vs subfolder flamewar, I'm going to say: it depends.
Same branding as the rest of your site? Want to treat is as part of the whole? Go with a subfolder.
Different brand? Different style? Different purpose? subdomain.
How new?
OSE doesn't track every website, and the index isn't updated real-time, so you could be either too new or just not included in the index.
I mean, right there in the OSE page for your domain, it tells you this:
Although our index is large, there are a number of reasons why we may not have data for the page you've requested. These can include:
Further to Alan, if I manually change user-agent to something unknown, the site 403's. Are you or your host using any sort of user-agent detection funkiness?
Why would you point rel canonical to a page you don't want to rank?
Someone else'll smack me if I'm wrong, however:
That's your only external linking root domain. And, your only true external link, too. Since September Google has considered subdomains internal links.
Shamelessly stealing this from Sha Menz in this thread:
You can do what you want to do as long as the keywords are loaded in your campaign. Its just a little hidden
If you go into the On-page tool you see the Summary view. If you look right above the big heading On-page Optimization, there are two blue text links. Choose Report Card.
Now you will see a selector which allows you to choose any keyword from your campaign list and enter the URL of any page in the site.
Click** Grade my On-page Optimization** and voila! Roger will fetch your Report Card!
Agreeing with Brent on password-protection. And everything else he said.
Also, if these are CMS-driven sites, I can almost guarantee you you've got paths pointing back to the dev-version. Probably absolute links to images and such. I've had that happen before. Remove the database and files from your dev directories and see what breaks on the live-site
In Webmaster Tools, use the Change of Address function.
I've never understood the point of having a meta title tag if you're going to use a regular <title>. Seems a little skeevy to me.</p> <p>To your question, it would not have any <em>positive</em> effect on ranking, since that juice was already supplied via the traditional title.</p></title>
I'd say use it where it makes sense. Location finder? use it. Contact page? Use it. Footer of every page? Nah.